Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

While taking a significant toll on public revenues [1.], repayment of public debt has, since 2004, ceased to be a major concern for most middle-revenue countries and for raw material exporting countries in general. In fact the majority of governments of these countries are having no trouble finding loans at historically low 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. . However, the debt crisis that hit the advanced industrial countries in 2007 could radically change the conditions of indebtedness in developing countries in the near future. Are we approaching the onset of another debt crisis in developing countries? The question requires thought, because if such is the case, we need to be prepared and take appropriate measures to limit the damage.

The historical facts

The last two centuries in the history of capitalism saw several international crises (three in the 19^th century and two in the 20^th [2.] ), which directly shaped the fate of emerging countries. The origin of these crises and the moment at which they peaked are closely related to the pace of the world economy, and particularly, to that of the advanced industrial countries. Each debt crisis was preceded by an abnormal boom in the countries of the centre, with an excess of capital being partly recycled into the economies of the periphery. The crisis was generally triggered by a recession or crash affecting some of the main industrialised economies.

Easy money

In the past few years, many developing countries have seen their export revenues soar thanks to the rising prices of goods they sell on the world market: hydrocarbons (oil and gas), minerals and agricultural products. This allows them to draw on these foreign exchange revenues to repay the debt and be credible candidates for new loans.

In addition, the commercial banks of the North, who had pulled back on loans at the end of the 1990s after the financial crises in developing countries, gradually re-opened the credit lines starting in 2004-2005 [3.] . Other private financial groups (pension funds Pension Fund
Pension Funds Pension funds: investment funds that manage capitalized retirement schemes, they are funded by the employees of one or several companies paying-into the scheme which, often, is also partially funded by the employers. The objective is to pay the pensions of the employees that take part in the scheme. They manage very big amounts of money that are usually invested on the stock markets or financial markets. , insurance companies, hedge funds Hedge funds Unlisted investment funds that exist for purposes of speculation and that seek high returns, make liberal use of derivatives, especially options, and frequently make use of leverage. The main hedge funds are independent of banks, although banks frequently have their own hedge funds. Hedge funds come under the category of shadow banking. ) have given credit to developing countries by buying bonds that these countries issued on the leading stock exchanges. States have also increased their offers of credit to developing countries, for example China, which has been on a widespread lending spree and Venezuela, which finances Argentina and the Caribbean countries. In general, the interest Interest An amount paid in remuneration of an investment or received by a lender. Interest is calculated on the amount of the capital invested or borrowed, the duration of the operation and the rate that has been set. rates and the risk premiums are far below those that prevailed up to the early 2000s. We should also mention the substantial credit granted within developing countries by local or foreign banks operating in the South.

The situation is changing

Things changed when the private debt crisis hit the advanced industrial countries in 2007 [4.]. This crisis was triggered by the bursting of the speculative real estate bubble in the US which brought about the collapse of several private debt markets (subprimes, ABCP [5.], CDO CDO
Collateralized Debt Obligations The term CDO covers multiple means of structuring paper products for financial assets. These include bonds, loans and sometimes non-listed shares. Such derivatives enable banks to render normally non liquid debts liquid, thus increasing the tradability of the asset. From the buyer’s point of view, CDO are also supposed to reduce risk by diluting it, since there is less chance of default on a bouquet of credits than on one single credit. In reality, the absence of clear information about the composition of CDO and the fact that they are often combined with high risk assets make them a very risky product.  [6.] , LBO LBO
leveraged Buy-Out The purchase or takeover of control of a company financed by debt. Most frequently an LBO is carried out by a holding company which borrows most of the funds needed for the purchase of the target company’s shares, restructures it, then requires dividends which are used to reimburse the loans and finally re-sells the company once it has returned to profitability.  [7.] , CDS CDS
Credit Default Swaps Credit Default Swaps are an insurance that a financial company may purchase to protect itself against non payments.  [8.] , ARS [9.] , etc.). This crisis is far from over and the world is only now feeling the impact of its repercussions.

While there was a veritable flood of credit up to July 2007, the various private sources suddenly dried up in the North. Private banks that were tied up in shaky debt packages began to distrust each other and were reluctant to lend money. The authorities of the US, Western Europe and Japan had to inject huge liquidities Liquidities The capital an economy or company has available at a given point in time. A lack of liquidities can force a company into liquidation and an economy into recession. on several occasions (hundreds of billions of dollars and euros) to prevent the North’s financial system from collapsing. During this time, private banks that financed themselves by selling non-guaranteed certificates could no longer find buyers for these on Northern financial markets. They had to clean up their books and write off the huge losses incurred by their risky operations of the previous years. To keep afloat they had to call in fresh money, provided by the sovereign-wealth funds of Asian and Gulf countries. Banks that could not find fresh money in time were acquired by others (Bear Stearns [10.] was bought by JP Morgan) or by the State (Northern Rock Bank was nationalised by the British government). Some of them did not escape bankruptcy. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, two North-American 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. giants, were in virtual bankruptcy in July 2008. These two institutions were privatised during the neo-liberal wave but were State guaranteed. Their mortgage portfolio amounts to some $5,300 billion (the equivalent of four times the external public debt of all developing countries). Washington nationalised them at the beginning of September 2008 [11.] . Ten days after the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae nationalisation, other US financial giants also fell: bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, nationalisation of AIG (the biggest insurance company worldwide) to forestall bankruptcy, a Bank of America buyout of Merrill
Lynch,…At present, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are struggling for survival, or rather, they are negotiating their mergers with or buyouts by groups that are more financially sound. At the root of the collapse of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG, is the collapse of the CDS market. US capitalism is facing its worst crisis since 1929 and the government is attempting a damage limitation process through a rescue package that will end up costing over 700 billion dollars. The current crisis has a global dimension and the consequences for developing countries will be very important.

At first, most developing countries were not affected

At first, the stock exchanges of many developing countries saw an influx of speculative money that was eager to flee the epicentre of the crisis, in other words, the US. The capital released by the bursting of the real-estate bubble which swept the Atlantic from West to East and struck Ireland, Great Britain and Spain (the list will get longer in the coming months) took refuge in other markets: the raw materials and food product markets in the North (thus further increasing prices) and certain stock markets in the South [12.] .

On another front, the decision of the US 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/ to periodically lower its interest rate target also lightened – at least provisionally – the South’s debt burden. Meanwhile the price of raw materials remained high, allowing exporting countries in the South to garner some large revenues.

Will the developing countries continue to build up large revenues from their exports?

Slower economic growth, already being felt in North America, Europe and Japan, will lead to less exports of manufactured products, mainly by China and other Asian countries. China’s domestic demand will not be enough to compensate for the drop in external demand.

The slowdown of economic activity in the industrialised countries, China and other Asian countries with a high consumption of raw materials (Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea, etc.) should eventually bring down the price of hydrocarbons and other raw materials. Of course the price of oil could remain high if OPEC OPEC
Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries OPEP is a group of 11 DC which produce petroleum: Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela. These 11 countries represent 41% of oil-production in the world and own more than 75% of known reserves. Founded in September 1960and based in Vienna (Austria), OPEC is in charge of co-ordinating and unifying the petroleum-related policies of its members, with the aim of guaranteeing them all stable revenues. To this end, production is organized on a quota system. Each country, represented by its Minister of Energy and Petroleum, takes a turn in running the organization. Since 1^st July 2002, the Venezuelan Alvaro Silva-Calderon is the Secretary General of OPEC.

OPEC : http://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/ were to agree to reduce the oil offer or if a major producer was prevented from producing oil at the normal rate (an attack on Iran by Israel and/or the US; a possible social and political crisis in Nigeria or elsewhere; a natural disaster in this place or that) and if speculators riding on the high wave continue buying into oil.

The future of exported food prices will depend on a number of factors. In order of importance: continued increase (or not) in agrofuel production, continued speculation on the food product exchanges, crop results (cereals should be on the rise in Europe), which are influenced in particular by climate change.

To this should be added the eventuality of less remittances by migrants to their native countries. Mexican, Ecuadorian and Bolivian workers in the US construction industry are directly affected by the real estate crisis and are fast losing their jobs. The Bank for International Settlements Bank for International Settlements
BIS The BIS is an international organization founded in 1930 charged with fostering international monetary and financial cooperation. It also acts as a bank for central banks. At present, 60 national central banks and the ECB are members.

http://www.bis.org/about/ has underlined this trend: “In addition to lower capital inflows, a slowdown in the advanced industrial economies would also lead to a decrease in workers’ remittances. This could have particularly large effects in countries in Central America, Mexico, India and the Philippines, thus increasing their external financing needs relative to the more comfortable circumstances of the past few years [14.] .”

To sum up, there is no guarantee that the substantial foreign currency revenues of those exporting countries that benefited most from them will continue. On the contrary, they are likely to diminish in the next few years.

Tighter loan conditions and a possible loss of revenues

But the uncertainty is not only about revenues: spending may also see wide variations.

According to the authors of the BIS 2008 Annual Report, the present trend for banks to reduce their credit offer is likely to last and even get stronger. In many cases, variable rate loans granted by banks of the North to developing countries are indexed on Libor LIBOR
London Interbank Offered Rate An average rate calculated daily, based on transactions made by a group of representative banks. There are several LIBORs for some ten different currencies and some fifteen duration rates, from one day to twelve months. (London Inter Bank Offered Rate), which is very volatile and tends to rise.

The losses that banks have to absorb have been at a high since 2007. The number of debt payment defaults is on the rise in the North. The Credit Default Swaps market, these unregulated credit derivative Credit derivative A financial product linked to a loan or an obligation. They are used to transfer the risk linked to a financial product while keeping, and insuring, the originating asset. One of the most common forms is the Credit Default Swap (CDS). contracts that were supposed to protect debt holders against the risk of payment default, is in a state of uncertainty because the sums involved are so enormous.

The outcome is obvious: banks and other institutional investors Institutional investors Entities which pool large sums of money and invest those sums in securities, real property and other investment assets. They are principally banks, insurance companies, pension funds and by extension all organizations that invest collectively in transferable securities. are thinking twice before granting new loans and when they do grant them, they impose tougher conditions [14.] . And this is just the beginning. In June 2008, the BIS wrote: “In this setting, sovereign spreads [in other words the risk premiums that public authorities pay to lenders] remain well below the levels observed in past periods of financial turbulence, but are significantly higher than they were in the first half of 2007, highlighting the risks that financing constraints could become binding [16.]” . A little further on, the BIS added: “As for the corporate sector, corporate bond Bond A bond is a stake in a debt issued by a company or governmental body. The holder of the bond, the creditor, is entitled to interest and reimbursement of the principal. If the company is listed, the holder can also sell the bond on a stock-exchange. spreads have recently widened more than sovereign spreads in a number of EMEs, indicating that some borrowers are starting to face tighter financing conditions after many years of easy borrowing [16.] .”

Furthermore, according to the BIS Annual Report, the countries most at risk are South Africa, Turkey, the Baltic states and those of Central and Eastern Europe, like Hungary and Romania (in the last two the real estate bubble is about to burst, while to make things worse loans have been indexed on strong currencies, the Swiss franc in particular).

“In view of the turmoil engulfing banks in advanced industrial economies, the second major vulnerability in some EMEs concerns the sustainability of bank-intermediated capital flows. Historically, bank flows have periodically been subject to sharp reversals, such as during the early 1980s in Latin America and during 1997-1998 in emerging Asia [17.]” .

Conclusions

As a result of the crisis affecting advanced industrial countries, loan conditions will certainly tighten for developing countries. The large currency reserves that they have been able to build up over recent years will serve as a buffer against the consequences of tighter conditions, butwill not be sufficient to protect them entirely. Certain weak links in the South’s indebtedness chain are in danger of being directly affected in the near future, all the more so since some of them have already been severely affected by the world food crisis of 2008. It is vital therefore to closely follow a situation that is presently uncontrolled, and prepare to find solutions. Otherwise the people will once again have to pay the highest price [18.] .