This comprehensive study traces the evolution of the
international debt crisis from its beginnings in the early 1970s to
the present. The author uses a sample of 24 major borrower and
heavily indebted countries to explore the economic forces within
developing countries and the external conditions which led to the
build-up of serious debt and their subsequent inability to carry
it. He focuses attention on the changing roles of multilateral
lending agencies such as the IMF and the World Bank and examines
the role played by U.S., European, and Japanese commercial banks in
creating conditions which led to unsustainable levels of debt among
Third World borrowers. Finally, O'Cleireacain details the changing
attitude of the U.S., from the early approaches of the Reagan
administration through Brady Plan initiatives of the Bush
administration. Scholars in development economics and international
finance will find O'Cleireacain's work an important contribution to
current debates over the causes of and policy responses to the
mounting Third World debt crisis.
In his discussion on the role of multilateral lending agencies,
O'Cleireacain analyzes the lending policies of the IMF, the
changing nature of IMF conditionality, and the relations between
debtor countries and the IMF. By examining the appropriate role of
private sector capital flows--which to some extent compete with
lending flows available from the IMF and the World Bank--the author
places the debt crisis in a wider international public policy
context. He concludes that private lending by commercial banks is
one of the fundamental causes of the crisis as borrowers have
turned to them to avoid the watchdog role of the established
multilateral lending agencies. Based on his extensive study of the
sample countries, O'Cleireacain calls for the use of IMF and World
Bank-endorsed development strategies which require external
financing but use exports to generate the foreign exchange to
service foreign debt. An appendix listing U.S. Treasury and Federal
Reserve support operations for debtor nations, a bibliography, and
an index complete the volume.
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