Who Owes Who?: 50 Questions about World Debt (Global Issues) [Paperback]

Damien Millet (Author), Eric Toussaint (Author)

Book Description

Series: Global Issues | Publication Date: December 23, 2004

The huge foreign debt of developing countries has become a mechanism of domination and means of recolonization that prevents any meaningful and sustainable human development. The policies pursued by the indebted countries' governments have usually been decided by their creditors rather than by the authorities of the countries concerned. As for the initiative to lighten the debt burden, launched with much fanfare by the G7, the IMF and the World Bank under pressure from the largest ever petition in human history, it has made clear its limits. In 50 questions and answers, this book explains in a simple but precise manner how and why the debt impasse has been arrived at. Illustrated with figures, maps and tables, it details the roles of the various actors involved, the mesh in which indebted countries are caught, and the various alternatives to future indebtedness.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'As this fine study demonstrates, lucidly and persuasively, the debt that is strangling much of the world is largely a "scam". In significant measure, it is an ideological fiction, devised in the service of wealth and power, with no legitimacy or moral force. With skill and precision, the authors unravel the layers of deceit and distortion that conceal the ugly reality, and provide an important tool for liberating the great mass of suffering people who are caught in these shackles. It is a very important achievement.' - Noam Chomsky

About the Author

Damien Millet is a mathematics teacher, secretary general of The Committee for the Cancellation of Third World Debt (CADTM), a member of ATTAC, and contributor to the journal Alternative (Niger).

Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist, president of CADTM, member of the International Council of the World Social Forum, and of the scientific committee of ATTAC in France.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Zed Books (December 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842774271
• ISBN-13: 978-1842774274
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,898 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Flawed account of the need to cancel odious debts, November 19, 2004

By 

William Podmore (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who Owes Who?: 50 Questions about World Debt (Global Issues) (Paperback)

Millet is the General Secretary of CADTM France (Comité pour l'Annulation de la Dette du Tiers Monde). Toussaint is the President of CADTM and a member of the International Council of the World Social Forum.

Their book examines the origins of the developing countries' debts, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank's debt management, the efforts to reduce the debts and most important, the moral, political, economic and legal case for cancelling the debts.

As Fidel Castro observed in 2000, "The debt has already been amply repaid, given the terms under which it was contracted, the arbitrary and vertiginous growth of interest rates on the dollar during the preceding decade and the fall in prices of the basic products which are the fundamental source of revenue for countries still needing to develop. The debt has become a self-perpetuating vicious circle where new debts are taken out to pay off the interest on standing ones."

The authors quote the Russian legal theorist Alexander Nahum Sack who wrote, "If a despotic power contracts a debt, not according to the needs and interests of the State, but to fortify the despotic regime, to put down the population which would combat it, this debt is odious for the population of the entire State. This debt is not binding for the nation, it is the debt of a regime, the personal debt of the power which contracted it. Consequently, it falls when that power falls."

So in 1776, the new revolutionary state of the USA repudiated all the debts due to bankers in London. Similarly, in 1917 the Bolshevik government repudiated the Tsar's debts to British and French banks.

The authors cite a Touareg proverb, "What you do for the others without the others, is against the others." This hits the capitalist globalisers, and also the anarchists whose federal networks of committee and forums mirror their false internationalism.

The workers in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America do not need international committees or social forums to tell them what to do. They will decide when how they cancel their rulers' debts.