Page 2 - Deuda Externa News Today

Latin America and the Caribbean are facing a serious debt crisis Part 4 In the previous three parts we have observed the evolution of the DCs’ external debt over the last twenty years. The first part shows a dramatic increase of indebtedness, which multiplied by 2.5 with a steep acceleration from 2008 onward. The second part highlights the main threats on the DCs’ external debt, among which the growing significance of bonds, the evolution of interest rates and the depreciation of their cur...

Full solidarity with the fight of our comrade Omar Radi who is on hunger strike for almost 2 weeks 22 April by Omar Radi, investigative journalist and human rights activist, has been on hunger strike since April 9 against his continued detention and to demand his immediate release. His state of health is becoming very critical. This is also the case for Soulaiman Raissouni, a journalist known in Morocco for his articles criticizing the regime, in detention since May 2020. Omar Radi is ...

IMF and debt: a new consensus? 16 April by MD Kristalina Georgieva conversation with World Bank’s David Malpass (CC - Flickr - IMF) There is much talk among ‘progressive’ economists that the IMF and the World Bank have turned over a new leaf. Gone are the days of supporting fiscal austerity, demanding that national governments get public debt levels down and insisting on conditions for countries borrowing IMF-WB funds that their governments privatise their state assets, deregula...

Sankara case and companions. The trial quickly! ... Blaise Compaoré must be extradited and France must cooperate! 16 April by Press Release The decisions of the pre-trial hearing, published on April 13, 2021, confirm the indictment of the main defendants. The case has now been referred to the Military Tribunal for due process. We demand that Blaise Compaoré be extradited to Burkina Faso and that France make the archives relating to the assassination of Thomas Sankara available to th...

A grim new year for debt-trapped rural women in Sri Lanka 16 April by M. Champa Irangani is in no mood to celebrate ‘Avurudu’, or New Year, the biggest annual festival that Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese community observes mid-April, while Tamils celebrate the Tamil New Year around the same time. “ The New Year will dawn only the day our debts are cancelled. Until then we cannot celebrate. Surely not, when so many women have died by suicide under the pressure of microfinance l...

Neoliberalism: An increasing gap among incomes and tax gifts to Capital  Evolution of low and high salaries since the 1960s The May 1968 general strike in France led to a considerable increase in the minimum wage over 15 years We do not have room to sum up the evolution of income inequalities over the last two centuries. We shall limit ourselves to highlighting the evolution in France since 1968. The May 1968 general strike in France, and the Grenelle accords that followed it, led to a consid...

On 11 April 2021, Guillermo Lasso (52,4%), the right-wing candidate, defeated Andres Arauz, the candidate supported by Rafael Correa and part of the Left, by 52.4% vs 47.6% in the second round of ballots for the presidential election. Lasso was elected thanks to the division of the Left, since a significant part of it, which has become deeply diffident of Rafael Correa, called for a null vote. Votes on the popular side, that represented a clear majority in the first round of February 2021, were...

Latin America has once again entered a period of strong social and political turbulence Interview with Franck Gaudichaud Franck Gaudichaud recently wrote and coordinated two collective works drawing a critical assessment of “progressive” political attempts to challenge neoliberal hegemony in Latin America. In this interview, he considers the social and political dynamics of the recent period, and also current issues in the region. The interview was conducted by Rosa Moussaoui, journalist an...

Series: 1944-2021, 77 years of interference from the World Bank and the IMF (Part 28) The World Bank did not Foresee the Arab Spring Popular Uprisings and still Promotes the very same Policies that triggered them 12 April by In 2021, the World Bank (WB) and the IMF will reach the age of 77. These two international financial institutions (IFIs), created in 1944, are dominated by the United States and a few major allied powers that act to generalize policies contrary to the interests o...

3 April by Piyumi Fonseka Sometimes a loan obtained to save a life can end up taking another life, in the debt-stricken villages of Sri Lanka. A 24-year-old mother killed her child and committed suicide two months ago due to her inability to repay a loan of Rs. 400, 000 to a micro-finance company. It is just one story out of millions of borrowers. Like more than 2.5 million other people in Sri Lanka, most of them were women; she had turned to micro credit in an effort to lift herself o...