Debt Crises Can and Need Be Resolved

By Martin Khor* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

GENEVA (IDN) – The issue of foreign debt has made a major comeback. This is due to the crisis in Europe, in which many countries had to seek big bailouts to keep them from defaulting on their loan payments. Before this, debt crises have been associated with African and Latin American countries. In 1997-99, three East Asian countries also joined the indebted countries’ club.

European countries, notably Germany, insisted that private creditors share the burden of resolving the Greek crisis. They had to take a “haircut” of about half, meaning that they would be repaid only half the amount they were owed.

Zero Interest Loans For The Poor Until 2014

By J C Suresh
IDN-InDepth NewsReport

TORONTO (IDN) – As part of a wider strategy to support concessional lending to poorer countries that are combating the effects of the global economic crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved a two-year extension to the zero interest rates charged on loans to low-income countries

Subsequent to further weakening of global growth and low-income countries’ declining ability to withstand the crisis, the IMF approved a second extension to the exceptional interest waiver on loans under its Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust (PRGT).

Investment Treaties Can Prove Damn Costly

A spate of lawsuits triggered by transnational corporations against Argentina, Ecuador, India. Indonesia, Uruguay, Vietnam, Australia and Canada, involving compensation worth billions of dollars is causing grave public concern and preparing the ground for reviewing so-called bilateral investment treaties.

By Martin Khor* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

GENEVA (IDN) – A growing number of international law suits has highlighted an emerging global crisis: the nature and effects of investment treaties signed between governments, which are allowing private companies and investors to sue countries for millions or even billions of dollars.

Asian Giants Poised to Outshine USA and Europe

By Jaya Ramachandran
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

PARIS (IDN) – The economies of China and India are poised to outshine those of the United States and Western Europe over the next half century, though an overwhelming majority of the Chinese and Indians are unlikely to attain the living standards of citizens in the rich industrial countries, predicts a new study.

Titled Looking to 2060: A Global Vision of Long-term Growth, the report expects the United States to cede its place as the world’s largest economy to China, as early as 2016. India’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is also projected to exceed that of the U.S. over the long term.

Anxiety Persists As IMF-World Bank Meet Ends

By Martin Khor*
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

GENEVA (IDN) – There were sobering messages on global economic prospects emerging from the 2012 meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on October 14 in Tokyo.

Developing countries’ Finance Ministers and Central Bank officials voiced their concerns on the failure of developed countries to deal with their economic situation and on the policy and political paralysis preventing solutions.

‘South’ Not an Alternative Engine of Global Growth

By Martin Khor *
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

The Eurozone crisis and the slowdown of the U.S. economy is impacting China, India and major countries in South America and Africa. They are increasingly faced with deterioration in GDP growth and exports. The forecast of a “staggering rise of the South” is turning out to be a myth.

GENEVA (IDN) – Developing countries are increasingly being adversely affected by the economic recession in Europe and the slowdown in the United States. The hope that major emerging economies like China, India and Brazil would continue to have robust growth, de-coupling from Western economies and becoming an alternative engine of global growth has been dashed by recent data showing that they are themselves weakening.

Bad News for the World Economy

By Santo Das Gupta
IDN-InDepth NewsReport

PARIS (IDN) – The prospects for the world economy look rather gloomy in the coming two years, says a respectable international economic organisation of 34 countries. The situation can, however, be redeemed if leading industrial and emerging countries take “bold decisions” to get the global economy back on track, it adds.

Is Time Ripe to Abandon the IMF?

By Raúl de Sagastizabal
IDN-InDepth NewsEssay

Hedging behaviour, a high degree of groupthink, intellectual capture, a general mind-set that excludes contrary views, fiefdom battles, inadequate analytical approaches, and lack of accountability should make governments ask themselves whether the time has not come to withdraw their support for the IMF.

IMF’s Forecast Mistakes Are Not Trivial

By Raul de Sagastizabal*
IDN-InDepth NewsEssay

MONTEVIDEO (IDN) – The storm that threatens the global economy has been raging ever since the toxic assets crisis started five long years ago. That crisis has not ended, or receded, but transformed into multiple crises: from fiscal deficit and sovereign debt to poverty, unemployment and the rise in food and fuel prices. Nevertheless, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had to get its face wet to take note of the storm and rain.

Global Depression Haunting World Economy

By Barry Grey*
IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

LOS ANGELES (IDN) – Three years after the Wall Street crash of 2008, finance ministers, central bankers and economists assembled in Washington for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank present a picture of perplexity and fear as the crisis spins out of control and lurches toward a full-scale depression.

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