CADTM developed its profile completely as an organization working on South-North debt relations since the early 1990s. However, its narrative in 2007 differed (along with its organization, action repertoire, and general framing practices). In its political charter written a year before the crisis moved from the lived reality of poor US homeowners into public consciousness, CADTM noted “two major opposing trends” to have emerged on a global scale since its foundation in 1990: a deepened “neo-liberal capitalist offensive, whose principal proponents are the G7, the IMF, the [World Bank] and the WTO, all of whom cater to the interests of multinationals and international financial capital”; but also a powerful
counter-movement to this trend. [2]

The North Atlantic Financial Crisis then tremendously changed CADTM’s structure, perspective, and eventually even its name. CADTM’s spokesperson Eric Toussaint remembers in a recent historicization of CADTM’s trajectory:

Yes, the Northern debt was not treated as a key issue in 1990, but I considered it to be so. As for the current situation, when the banking crisis which erupted in the US in 2006-2007 engulfed Europe towards 2007-2008, and when a number of countries socialized their banking losses to save the banks, the public debt rocketed. I was immediately convinced, with other members of the CADTM, that it was time to take into account the new dimension of the Northern public debt. We did so before it dawned upon others. We must remember that in 2008-2009, the first reaction of José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, was to propose a policy which looked like a neo-Keynesian turning-point. In fact, it simply provided temporary social shock absorbers because the Northern governments dreaded that the challenge to the system might turn into something colossal and dynamic. (Toussaint & Lemoine)

Indeed, briefly after the banking collapse of September 2008, Toussaint argued that the current was a deep crisis and that the socialization of private banking losses would entail wide-spread grievances (Toussaint 2008 [3]). Concretely, he criticized that the bailout policy equaled transferring the bill of “capitalists’ misbehaviour” to most of the population, who will face “less public services, fewer jobs, further decrease in purchasing power, higher contribution of patients to the cost of health care, of parents to the cost of their children’s education, less public investment … and a rise of indirect taxes.” Additionally, he stated that “[w]ith the deepening crisis a deep sense of unease will develop into political distrust of governments that carried out such operations” (Toussaint 2008).

CADTM’s analyses embedded the crisis into its previously developed body of knowledge, which stressed the interconnection of different forms of crisis, the link between Southern and Northern debt, and “the necessity to construct local and global alternatives

As a consequence of the crisis and its perception, work and analyses related to the crisis constituted one of the main pillars of CADTM’s activities in 2008 and 2009 (CADTM 2008a; 2009). In particular, the crisis impacted both CADTM’s public education activities as well as its production of analyses (CADTM 2008a). CADTM organized a three-day workshop called “Week-end Résistance 2008: L’Agriculture en résistance” (CADTM 2008b), a popular tribunal against the G8 (CADTM 2008c), and co-hosted a series of six seminars under the title “finance and the citizen.” Additionally, the network held popular assemblies, a “camp des alternatives,” as well as a conference on local alternatives, and produced texts and videos about the crisis (CADTM 2008a; 2009; Millet & Toussaint 2010 [4]).

CADTM’s analyses embedded the crisis into its previously developed body of knowledge, which stressed the interconnection of different forms of crisis, the link between Southern and Northern debt, and “the necessity to construct local and global alternatives” (CADTM 2009, 8). They also stressed that “more and more the Southern populations are not the only ones to suffer the consequences of the failure of this system” and that Northern debt crises will entail austerity plans (CADTM 2009, 8). In its 2008 annual report, it distinguished several interconnected crises: financial, economic, food, climate-ecological, migration, and governance crisis (CADTM 2008a, 43 ff). The report identified … …

a structural need of capitalism to destroy excessive financial capital, which produced interrelated financial and economic crises;

a new food crisis stemming from export-driven reorganization of Southern agricultural sectors and the US-led financialization of agriculture;

a chronic ecological crisis related to centuries of Northern industrialization;

a degradation of Southern living conditions entailed by all these processes and subsequent migration flows towards the North, where remittances are now weakened due to unemployment and austerity;

a crisis of governance empowering undemocratic institutions such as G8 and G20, World Bank, and IMF, who have the power to face the deep crisis, unlike the United Nations.

In line with its transforming analyses and practices, CADTM in the following years significantly changed its structure and eventually even its name. On the one hand, it further de-centralized its activities to combat North-South asymmetries, and on the other it expanded its intervention in Northern anti-austerity struggles.

Until the global assembly in the Moroccan city of Bouznika in 2013, CADTM Belgium had solely managed the International Secretariat, but from then on successively shifted responsibilities to Attac/CADTM Morocco in order to eventually share the secretariat (CADTM International 2013). The idea had already been discussed since the 2010 global assembly in Belgium (CADTM; Toussaint 2013). The actual implementation was successively impeded by repression of the Moroccan authorities (CADTM interview 2), but the decision was evaluated positively and confirmed at the following global assembly in the Tunis suburb of Borj Credia in 2016, where the event was held since Moroccan authorities refused to issue a permission for the event (ATTAC/CADTM Maroc 2016). At the same assembly the network also decided to change its name to “Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt,” but keep its trademark acronym. The decision was justified with the re-configuration of North-South relations vis-à-vis the recent crisis:

The CADTM network name change is justified by the evolution of its work in industrialized northern countries. CADTM was founded in 1990 in the middle of the Southern debt crisis to demand the cancellation of the debt of countries known as the Third World, but over time the term “Third World” is used less and less. With the 2008 financial crisis and its repercussions, the CADTM’s sphere of activity has gradually extended to public debt in the industrialized North, without giving up anything in regards to demanding cancellation of so called “Third World” countries’ debts. The CADTM has shown how the whole “debt system” subjugates people in the south just as much as people in the north of the planet. To address this whole “debt system,” the CADTM has developed a new strand of action and reflection on the issue of illegitimate private debt, such as that related to micro-credit in which women are the primary victims, farmer debt, student debt, families evicted by banks, etc. The concept of “illegitimate debt” can encompass both public and private debt in theSout h and the North. Finally, the term abolition is stronger than that of cancellation in the sense that it demands the disappearance of even the concept of illegitimate debt. (CADTM International 2016).