Debt crisis

“Suspend external debts and apply tax to the wealthy”, is it possible to face the health crisis?

22 April 2020 - by Eric Toussaint

Eric Toussaint, Belgian historian and doctor of Political Sciences from the University of Liège (Belgium), has spent a good part of his life auditing debts from different countries of the world and requesting the suspension of several of them due to their “illegitimate and hateful” character. He (...)
Covid-19 on a debt assault

17 April 2020 - by Eric Toussaint, Christophe Koessler

The Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) is of the opinion that the limited resources of the countries of the South should be devoted to fight the pandemic rather than reimbursing international creditors. The coronavirus crisis and its cascading economic consequences could (...)
Abolish illegitimate and odious claims by European countries from third parties and give absolute priority to human rights

3 April 2020 - by ReCommons Europe

Phase 2 of the ReCommonsEurope project: “The impact of European financial policies and development cooperation strategies on the South and possible alternatives”. This document is the first of the five texts that form part of the publication entitled “The impact on the South of European (...)
A Debt Jubilee is the Only Way to Avoid a Depression

24 March 2020 - by Michael Hudson

Even before the novel coronavirus appeared, many American families were falling behind on student loans, auto loans, credit cards and other payments. America’s debt overhead was pricing its labor and industry out of world markets. A debt crisis was inevitable eventually, but covid-19 has made it (...)
Escaping the Debt Trap

21 March 2020 - by Michael McCallister

You can’t really understand the world, especially global North-South relationships, without understanding how foreign aid works. The Debt System will help you do that. The book argues for the necessity of a radical restructuring of global finance. Eric Toussaint is spokesperson of the (...)
Lebanon is a severe case of subordinate financialization that must avoid the IMF

9 March 2020 - by Costas Lapavitsas, Jude Kadri

Costas Lapavitsas is an economist from Greece. He presently teaches Economics at the University of London and was elected as a member of the Greek Parliament for SYRIZA in January 2015. He left to form Popular Unity in August 2015, when SYRIZA signed a new bail-out with the EU and the IMF. His (...)
Out of service: How public services and human rights are being threatened by the growing debt crisis

25 February 2020 - by Iolanda Fresnillo, Eurodad

Public services play a critical role in advancing human rights and fighting inequality. However, growing levels of external public debt, especially in the global south, threaten the very services on which citizens depend in order to have even a basic standard of living. External debt levels (...)
Somalia should reject IMF & World Bank Debt Relief

17 February 2020 - by David Calleb Otieno

Last week, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that the two institutions were moving closer to offering Somalia a debt relief of USD 5.3 billion translating to about KES530 billion under the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative which is an (...)
New debt crisis in the South

18 December 2019 - by Milan Rivié

Public external debt in countries of the South [1] is a source of concern, notably because of its dramatic increase within the last two decades and because of parallels with the pre-crisis debt situation of Third World countries in the 1980s. Beyond the similarities, the widespread use of bond (...)
New Threats, New Resistances and New Alternatives

12 November 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

We conclude with thoughts about the agency for resistance to these neoliberal policies, both ones in existence since the early 1990s (Bond 2014) and those that are being re-introduced through SEZs and the renewed export-led ‘growth’ strategy. The SEZ strategy did not begin well, Treasury at (...)
Local South African Economic Conditions

6 November 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

As the world economy spirals into crisis stage, with fully-fledged deglobalisation and a new round of financial turmoil, the South African context is just as foreboding. Corporations and workers alike are ill prepared for the period ahead, especially if it entails another export-led drive (...)
Africa’s Renewed Crises of Unbalanced Trade, Disinvestment, Debt

29 October 2019 - by Eric Toussaint, Patrick Bond, Ishmael Lesufi, Lisa Thompson

In addition to China, Africa is meant to be one of the most critical markets for South Africa’s SEZs, and attracting other investment, trade and finance to the continent was one justification for entering the BRICS bloc, according to Jacob Zuma and his colleagues. In 2013, for example, deputy (...)
Migrants, debt and propaganda

3 July 2019 - by CADTM Italy

As regards the docking of the Sea Watch 3 ship, a heated debate is rising in Italy, which could not but involve organizations also dealing with economics, finance and debt. In these days we are witnessing the representation of a dramatic , tragic and aberrant propaganda, whose aim is using (...)
Global Sovereign Debt Monitor 2019

29 May 2019 - by Erlassjahr.de, Jürgen Kaiser

Currently, 122 out of 154 countries examined are critically in debt, just under 80 per cent. The situation is particularly alarming in Bhutan, Mongolia, Gambia, Cape Verde Islands, Jamaica, Bahrain and Lebanon. In almost three-quarters of the 122 critically indebted countries, the majority of (...)
Crisis deepens as global South debt payments increase by 85%

9 April 2019 - by Jubilee Debt Campaign

- External debt payments by developing country governments grew by 85%, as a proportion of government revenue, between 2010 and 2018 For the countries with the highest payments, in two-thirds public spending is falling The largest cuts were in Egypt, Cameroon, Angola and Mongolia, all of (...)
Mozambique: impact of Cyclone Idai boosts case for non-repayment of secret loans, says UN rights expert

4 April 2019 - by Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky

GENEVA (29 March 2019) – “The realisation of economic, social and cultural rights in Mozambique should not be jeopardised by the servicing of the country’s debt and in particular its ‘secret loan’ component. Human rights and devastating impacts of Cyclone Idai must imperatively be considered in debt (...)
Mozambique needs urgent action on debt crisis following Cyclone Idai

22 March 2019 - by Jubilee Debt Campaign

Cyclone Idai has caused huge destruction and loss of life in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. The true extent of the disaster is not yet known. Below are reactions from partner organisations of Jubilee Debt Campaign in Mozambique, followed by reaction from Jubilee Debt Campaign: Anabela Lemos (...)
Debt Cancellation for Somalia

7 February 2019 - by Somalia NGO consortium

You will find below a report on Somalia’s sovereign debt which was issued by a consortium of NGOs. While some of their recommendations and their approach to possible solutions to the debt crisis are not completely in agreement with the CADTM’s positions, we found their analysis useful to (...)
Debt Island: Wall Street Closes in on 40 Years of Profit at Puerto Rico’s Expense

30 January 2019 - by Abner Dennis, Kevin Connor

An important chapter in the story of the Puerto Rican debt crisis is comingto an end this month, as an adjustment plan around sales tax-backed, or COFINA, debt is being voted on by creditors and will likely be approved by the federal court overseeing the restructuring process in mid-January. (...)
Things to watch in 2019: Debt and emerging debt crises

18 January 2019 - by Bodo Ellmers

More than a decade after the last global financial crisis hit, the next wave of defaults is lapping at our shores. Financing conditions will become more difficult in 2019. The world’s major central banks ‘normalised’ their monetary policies last year, meaning that the times of cheap and abundant (...)
G20 Summit in Buenos Aires: A non-event amidst citizen protests

22 December 2018 - by María José Romero, Bodo Ellmers, Tove Maria Ryding

When the global financial crisis broke, the world looked to the G20 to find solutions. But as G20 leaders recently gathered in Buenos Aires 10 years on for their 2018 Summit, it was all too clear that ‘too big to fail banks’ have grown even bigger while we’re stuck with a vastly expanded shadow (...)
How do the dominant media manipulate the debt issue?

15 December 2018 - by Eric Toussaint, The Medium

Eric Toussaint talks to The Medium. The discourse in mainstream media and by governments consists of repeating that there is too much public debt, too much public expenditure, that States must pay their debts and reduce their expenditure. With the CADTM, we are raising the questions of where (...)
Argentina: More lending guarantees creeping austerity

16 November 2018 - by Gino Brunswijck

Against a backdrop of public protests, on 25 October the Argentinian government approved the 2019 budget including US$10 billion worth of cuts in essential areas such as education and public works. The next day, the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) completed the first (...)
Ukraine: Between a rock and IMF conditionality

16 October 2018 - by Bretton Woods Project

Alarm bells ring about Ukraine’s ability to meet IMF conditionality UN expert criticises IMF anti-corruption privatisation push In September, IMF staff visited Ukraine to discuss the next tranche of its $17.5 billion loan programme, first approved in March 2014 (see Observer Spring 2014, (...)
The politics of quantitative easing

3 July 2018 - by Rodrigo Fernandez, Pablo Bortz, Nicolas Zeolla

A new age of debt crises in emerging economies is on the horizon. Debt levels have been rising across developing countries since the 2008 global financial crisis, on the back of favourable monetary policies in developed economies. The end of Quantitative Easing (QE) programmes and the rise in (...)