Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

📌 Conference – Social Forum
👉 Marseille, Friche de la Belle de Mai cultural centre
🕗 From Friday 26 to Sunday 28 April 2024

The CADTM will be conducting 6 workshops either on its own or in partnership with other organizations.

There will also be a meeting specifically for the CADTM International network.

 New international debt crisis

A new international debt crisis started in 2022. The more impoverished countries such as Zambia were the first to be hit, but other countries of the Global South have also been affected such as Argentina, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Egypt, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Tunisia. Countries of the North have also experienced a steep increase in their public debt. The debts of popular households have increased too. The rise in interest rates Interest rates When A lends money to B, B repays the amount lent by A (the capital) as well as a supplementary sum known as interest, so that A has an interest in agreeing to this financial operation. The interest is determined by the interest rate, which may be high or low. To take a very simple example: if A borrows 100 million dollars for 10 years at a fixed interest rate of 5%, the first year he will repay a tenth of the capital initially borrowed (10 million dollars) plus 5% of the capital owed, i.e. 5 million dollars, that is a total of 15 million dollars. In the second year, he will again repay 10% of the capital borrowed, but the 5% now only applies to the remaining 90 million dollars still due, i.e. 4.5 million dollars, or a total of 14.5 million dollars. And so on, until the tenth year when he will repay the last 10 million dollars, plus 5% of that remaining 10 million dollars, i.e. 0.5 million dollars, giving a total of 10.5 million dollars. Over 10 years, the total amount repaid will come to 127.5 million dollars. The repayment of the capital is not usually made in equal instalments. In the initial years, the repayment concerns mainly the interest, and the proportion of capital repaid increases over the years. In this case, if repayments are stopped, the capital still due is higher…

The nominal interest rate is the rate at which the loan is contracted. The real interest rate is the nominal rate reduced by the rate of inflation. decided by central banks such as the ECB ECB
European Central Bank The European Central Bank is a European institution based in Frankfurt, founded in 1998, to which the countries of the Eurozone have transferred their monetary powers. Its official role is to ensure price stability by combating inflation within that Zone. Its three decision-making organs (the Executive Board, the Governing Council and the General Council) are composed of governors of the central banks of the member states and/or recognized specialists. According to its statutes, it is politically ‘independent’ but it is directly influenced by the world of finance.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/html/index.en.html , the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve FED
Federal Reserve Officially, Federal Reserve System, is the United States’ central bank created in 1913 by the ’Federal Reserve Act’, also called the ’Owen-Glass Act’, after a series of banking crises, particularly the ’Bank Panic’ of 1907.

FED – decentralized central bank : http://www.federalreserve.gov/ of the United States have made the situation even more calamitous. A new wave of austerity measures has been gradually spreading throughout the world from South to North. What are its deep-lying causes? What are the solutions?

Is the New Development Bank established by the BRICS BRICS The term BRICS (an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) was first used in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, then an economist at Goldman Sachs. The strong economic growth of these countries, combined with their important geopolitical position (these 5 countries bring together almost half the world’s population on 4 continents and almost a quarter of the world’s GDP) make the BRICS major players in international economic and financial activities. countries a viable alternative to the IMF IMF
International Monetary Fund Along with the World Bank, the IMF was founded on the day the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed. Its first mission was to support the new system of standard exchange rates.

When the Bretton Wood fixed rates system came to an end in 1971, the main function of the IMF became that of being both policeman and fireman for global capital: it acts as policeman when it enforces its Structural Adjustment Policies and as fireman when it steps in to help out governments in risk of defaulting on debt repayments.

As for the World Bank, a weighted voting system operates: depending on the amount paid as contribution by each member state. 85% of the votes is required to modify the IMF Charter (which means that the USA with 17,68% % of the votes has a de facto veto on any change).

The institution is dominated by five countries: the United States (16,74%), Japan (6,23%), Germany (5,81%), France (4,29%) and the UK (4,29%).
The other 183 member countries are divided into groups led by one country. The most important one (6,57% of the votes) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1,55% of the votes) is led by Gabon and brings together African countries.

http://imf.org ?

What development model does it support? Does it break away from fossil fuels? What position is assigned to Africa? How does it behave as lender? Does it try to substitute another currency for the US dollar? What are the alternatives?

 Ecological justice and climate debt: For radical alternatives

The emergency of climate change is getting every day more urgent; countries of the South and of the North must massively invest to implement the ecological bifurcation and adapt to the damage caused by climate disruption. Floods in Pakistan in 2022, wildfires in Chile, droughts and floods in the Horn of Africa, there are instances galore. Countries of the North, the International Financial Institutions, the richest percentile and large transnational corporations are historically responsible for the current predicament. They are the minority that enforced and profited from the neo-liberal capitalist system.

 Fighting the Far Right

We have to promote major unity events to efficiently mobilize against the rise of the Far Right world-wide. In the fight against the Far Right, the CADTM is actively involved in the preparation of an event in Porto Alegre (State of Rio Grande do Sul - Brazil), the birthplace of the WSF, in partnership with the PT and the PSOL (with the active involvement of the MST - Landless People’s Movement and the CUT main trade union of the state of Rio Grande do Sul) for the weekend of 17 to 19 May 2024. It will be the launch of a world-wide initiative against the rise of the Far Right, with a large conference in Brazil in 2025. See: https://antifas.org/call/ and https://antifas.org/subscribe/

And other activities... And more…

For more information : spaceforalternatives.eu