Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME
The names of speakers will be provided later

Saturday 8 September
Opening Plenary Session
Ten years on from the 2008 banking crisis which led to States bailing out major private banks, we are faced with austerity and the systematic dismantling of public services with a view to privatizing them. In response, citizens are organizing forms of resistance to the crisis and to austerity by proposing alternatives to the neoliberal and capitalist offensive.

Saturday 8 September,
Presentation of Renaud Duterme’s book entitled De quoi l’effondrement est-il le nom? (What exactly is meant by collapse?)

Workshop 1: “What is the debt system?”
o Capitalism, debt system and migrations
o Debt in the North
o Presentation of Éric Toussaint’s book, Le Système Dette. Histoire des dettes souveraines et de leur répudiation (Les Liens qui Libèrent, 2017)

Workshop 2: “The debt system today”
o Vulture Funds Vulture funds
Vulture fund Investment funds who buy, on the secondary markets and at a significant discount, bonds once emitted by countries that are having repayment difficulties, from investors who prefer to cut their losses and take what price they can get in order to unload the risk from their books. The Vulture Funds then pursue the issuing country for the full amount of the debt they have purchased, not hesitating to seek decisions before, usually, British or US courts where the law is favourable to creditors. and mortgage Mortgage A loan made against property collateral. There are two sorts of mortgages:
1) the most common form where the property that the loan is used to purchase is used as the collateral;
2) a broader use of property to guarantee any loan: it is sufficient that the borrower possesses and engages the property as collateral. loans
o China, a new lending power and the One Belt One Road project
o How is the South resisting the debt system?

Workshop 3: “Converging struggles and Alternatives”
o The debt crisis in Europe and the struggle for alternatives
o Citizen audits (Italy, the Spanish State, France, Gabon, Belgium...): what concrete models? What kind of networking?
o Socialization of banks – for democratic control of finance

Sunday 9 September
Closing Plenary Session
Public debt and social debt: feminist non-payment of debt, with activists from the Spanish State, Italy and Argentina

Book presentations
Saturday 8 September : De quoi l’effondrement est-il le nom ? (What exactly is meant by collapse?) by Renaud Duterme
Saturday 8 September : Le Système Dette (The Debt System) by Éric Toussaint
Sunday 9 September : Il faut tuer TINA (TINA has to be killed) by Olivier Bonfond

And in the evening we’ll party…
With a show,
a film projection,
a concert: DJ KITOKO and MISS SIROCCO have already confirmed that they will be there!