Private debt

Morocco: For the suspension of the payment of micro-finance loans for a period of 6 months, renewable with exemption of all interest

5 April 2020 - by ATTAC/CADTM Maroc

The country has taken the measures announced by the Economic Vigilance Committee to address the impact of the Corona virus pandemic. However, these measures have not yet included micro-finance victims. The professional group of Moroccan banks has announced that those who have lost their jobs (...)
In Sri Lanka, Resistance to Private Indebtedness Is a Strategic Issue

3 March 2020 - by Nathan Legrand

In Sri Lanka, the issue of private indebtedness — in particular in the form of microcredit — is a major problem that negatively affects borrowers and their families, but also society as a whole. The influence of microfinance in Sri Lanka is such that there is little doubt that a strong movement (...)
Debt in Times of Economic Crisis

2 March 2020 - by Ahilan Kadirgamar

Debt relief is now a call at all levels of state and society in Sri Lanka. The Prime Minister recently requested a three-year moratorium on debt repayments to India, the Government earlier announced a debt repayment moratorium of one year for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) with loans up to (...)
MONLAR: Micro credit sharks drove 200 poor borrowers to suicide during last three years

2 March 2020 - by Rathindra Kuruwita

About 200 people had committed suicide, during the last three years or so, as they were unable to pay back the micro-credit loans and many of those organisations had obtained the services of village thugs to recover money Chinthaka Rajapakshe, Convener of the Movement for Land and Agricultural (...)
IMF: Inhuman at the micro and macro levels

27 February 2020 - by Eric Toussaint

Hiruni, a fisherman’s wife, who has to manage her household (of five people) with an income of about 2.5 euros (= 500 Sri Lankan rupees) per day, is heavily indebted. In order to increase her household income, she borrowed 50,000 rupees (250 euros) from the LOLC bank, which specialises in (...)
Colombo declaration on illegitimate debt

27 February 2020 - by CADTM

We, the participants of the 8th CADTM South Asia meeting from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, as well as from Morocco, Belgium and France assembled at Colombo, Sri Lanka from 18-19 February 2020 resolve to fight against illegitimate debt which is a mechanism to transfer wealth created (...)
The Microcredit Scam

20 February 2020 - by Nathan Legrand

The following text is a slightly adapted version from a presentation given at the 8th CADTM South Asia workshop (Colombo, Sri Lanka, 18-19 February 2020). Microcredit: A Success Story? In its modern form, microcredit has supposedly been invented in the South Asian region (Bangladesh) by (...)
The Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt (CADTM) on private debt and human rights

13 January 2020 - by Chiara Filoni, Eva Betavatzi, Mats Lucia Bayer

This is our contribution to the appeal made by the UN Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations of States on the full enjoyment of all human rights, Mr. Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky. Mr. Bohoslavsky, in the course of preparing his next (...)
How Is The Agrarian Distress In Maharashtra Affecting Women

23 December 2019 - by Manjima Misra

The plight of farm widows remains underreported due to lack of data, dearth of special focus on the gendered dimension of agrarian distress, policy paralysis and apathy of government. Women from suicide affected agricultural households suffer on multiple levels due to the burden of overwhelming (...)
Alert on the sophistication of illegitimate debt techniques via mobile telephony

8 November 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

In the era of widespread mobile telephony, we witnessed certain capitalist firms employing a sophistication of techniques to ensure the illegitimate debt of the lower classes. Kenya, a country of 50 million people, is considered to be at the forefront of mobile telephony and digitalisation. (...)
Corporate debt, fiscal stimulus and the next recession

23 October 2019 - by Michael Roberts

The debt owed by corporations in the major economies has risen since the end of the Great Recession in 2009. With global growth slowing and the prospect rising of an outright global recession recurring ten years after the last one, the debt held by corporations may soon become so burdensome to (...)
Microfinance has been a nightmare for the global south. Sri Lanka shows that there is an alternative

12 September 2019 - by Ahilan Kadirgamar, Niyanthini Kadirgamar

The global hegemony of finance capital is based on burgeoning household debt accompanied by devastating dispossession. This is more evident in peripheral societies, where state investment in the rural economy is abandoned for the myth of expanding incomes through self-employment with the help (...)
Kenya: Perpetual Debt in the Silicon Savannah

2 September 2019 - by Emma Park, Kevin P. Donovan

Kenya’s poor were among the first to benefit from digital lending apps; now they call it slavery. Across conversations in Kenya’s pubs and WhatsApp groups, debt is on everyone’s mind. The speed and ease of access to credit through new mobile apps delivers cash to millions of Kenyans in need, but (...)
As President, Bernie Should Cancel All Student Debt

24 June 2019 - by Ben Beckett

The billions of dollars in student loan debt are an economic and moral crisis. Bernie Sanders should promise to wipe it all out. In the United States, education is supposed to be an equalizer, and higher education in particular is key to improving your life chances. At least that’s how the (...)
Lonmin’s murder, by money

6 June 2019 - by Patrick Bond

Autopsy reveals Lonmin—the British-South African company—corpse’s poisoning by microfinance, ‘development finance’ and corporate finance. The death of the 110-year old mining house Lonmin at a London shareholders meeting on 28 May occurred not through bankruptcy or nationalisation, as would have (...)
The mountain of corporate debt will be the seed of the next financial crisis

3 May 2019 - by Eric Toussaint

The scene is again set for a new major international financial crisis. Central bankers, leaders of institutions such as the IMF, the OECD and the Bank for International Settlements are all aware of the situation. Many articles in the specialized press proclaim it. One of the factors is the (...)
A delicate moment

17 April 2019 - by Michael Roberts

The IMF-World Bank meeting in Washington this weekend revealed again that the world economy is slowing down and the prospect of an outright recession is getting much higher. The IMF economists cut their outlook for global growth to the lowest since the global financial crisis of 2009 amid a (...)
Socialise Housing across Europe!

5 April 2019 - by Collective

Tomorrow, Saturday 6 April, many actions will take place across Europe to cry out loudly that it is time to stop the financialisation of housing and to defend the right to decent housing for all. CADTM supports these actions and signed this call made by several European associations (Portugal, (...)
South Africa Suffers Capitalist Crisis Déjà Vu

3 April 2019 - by Patrick Bond

A year ago, the majority of South Africans stared into the abyss. They faced either a continuation of corrupt misrule by a stereotypical kleptocrat—Jacob Zuma—whose anti-imperialist rhetoric failed to disguise worsening austerity, or a potentially dramatic change of political direction toward (...)
A Little History of Chinese Economy

27 March 2019 - by Alice Jetin Duceux

Today’s China is vastly different from what it was during Mao’s socialist period (1949-1976). Half of the Chinese population has now moved from Mao’s beloved countryside to shining—and polluted—megacities. Smartphones abound where bikes were once considered valuable wedding presents. The World (...)
The Greek people are tax hostages to the Troika and the bankers

15 January 2019 - by Louv Coukoutsi

Louv Coukoutsi, CADTM correspondent in Greece In Greece, an Autonomous Authority over Public Resources (Anexartiti Archi Dimosion Esodon, AADE), that has two sitting representatives of the European Commission, has replaced the Greek Exchequer and retrieved all the attributions of the ministry (...)
An Overview of Chinese Debt

20 December 2018 - by Alice Jetin Duceux

Are Chinese corporations overleveraged? Since the central government injected massive sums of money in the economy as part of a stimulus plan to fight the Great Recession, debt levels in the Chinese economy have skyrocketed. See the second part of this report: A Little History of Chinese (...)
Corporate debt – the IMF gets worried

20 November 2018 - by Michael Roberts

The IMF does not pull any punches in its latest post on the IMF blog. It is really worried that so-called ‘leveraged loans’ are reaching dangerous levels globally. These loans, usually arranged by a syndicate of banks, are made to companies that are heavily indebted or have weak credit ratings. (...)
Sri Lanka: Does microfinance really empower women?

2 October 2018 - by Cat’s Eye

As women were deemed to be thrifty, able to manage with meagre resources and responsible borrowers, they became the targets for such predatory lending. We are witnessing large protests across the war-torn regions in the north and east, urging the Government to restrict the activities of (...)
Microfinance: Does it empower women?

18 September 2018 - by Independent collective of feminists

We are witnessing large protests across the war-torn regions in the north and east, urging the Government to restrict the activities of microfinance companies offering loans to poor women at exorbitantly high interest rates. Women’s groups in other parts of the country are also voicing their (...)