Private debt

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 (...)
Debts and feminisms: an overview of the book project – first chapter

13 August 2018 - by Camille Bruneau

Feminism and the situation of women is an ever-growing concern for the CADTM network, which becomes almost unavoidable in the broad fight against domination(s). Women are indeed impacted by debt in several ways; as the main contractors of micro-credits, as the caretakers that have a higher (...)
USA: Where the Debt Slaves Are the Most Vulnerable

24 May 2018 - by Wolf Richter

I’m shedding a different light on consumer debt. This type of chart is trotted out constantly these days to show that American households are in fabulous shape when it comes to their ability to service their blistering record debts. The red line in the chart shows household debt-service (...)
Taking a close look at the growing household...

4 May 2018 - by Amra Ismail

Taking a close look at the growing household debts in the North and East It is opined that there should be debt counselling or a service whereby debtors can come to an amicable settlement with the creditors
“Stop Repaying Illegitimate Debt”

4 May 2018 - by Eric Toussaint, Amra Ismail

While in Colombo, Sri Lanka, for the 7th CADTM South Asia workshop in April, Éric Toussaint was interviewed by the Daily Mirror, a major Sri Lankan daily newspaper. He answered questions on illegitimate debts, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, cancellation or non-repayment of public and private (...)
Damning testimonies of microcredit abuse

25 April 2018 - by Eric Toussaint, Nathan Legrand

Contrary to what is often claimed, microcredits are not a way out of poverty; on the contrary they most often result in a greater deprivation and humiliation of their victims. On the Indian sub-continent 65 million people have taken on a microcredit, 90% are women. Worldwide, women count for (...)
India: Thriving Usury in Tirunelveli

23 April 2018 - by S. Aadhirai

The recent self-immolation of a family in Tamil Nadu drew widespread attention to the issue of usury prevalent in the state. Following a hearing on the depositions of 60 borrower victims at a people’s tribunal in Tirunelveli district, an attempt has been made to examine the nature of the issue, (...)
‘Sooner or later, there will be a new financial crisis’

18 April 2018 - by Eric Toussaint, Meera Srinivasan

Regulators, governments to blame, says Eric Toussaint of the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt. The recent bubbles in the stock exchanges and financial markets foretell an imminent financial crisis that would likely be stronger and more dangerous than in the past, according to (...)