“The IMF’s Role in the Prevention and Resolution of Sovereign Debt Crises” provides a guided narrative to the IMF’s policy papers on sovereign debt produced over the last 40 years. The papers are divided into chapters, tracking four historical phases: the 1980s debt crisis; the Mexican crisis and the design of policies to ensure adequate private sector involvement (“creditor bail-in”); the Argentine crisis and the search for a durable crisis resolution framework; and finally, the global financial crisis, the Eurozone crisis, and their aftermaths.
The global economy has experienced four waves of rapid debt accumulation over the past 50 years. The first three debt waves ended with financial crises in many emerging market and developing economies. During the current wave, which started in 2010, the increase in debt in these economies has already been larger, faster, and broader-based than in the previous three waves. Current low interest rates mitigate some of the risks associated with high debt. However, emerging market and developing economies are also confronted by weak growth prospects, mounting vulnerabilities, and elevated global risks. A menu of policy options is available to reduce the likelihood that the current debt wave will end in crisis and, if crises do take place, will alleviate their impact.
Examining the causes of the acute Latin American debt crisis that began in mid-1982, North American analysts have typically focused on deficiencies in the debtor countries' economic policies and on shocks from the world economy. Much less emphasis has been placed on the role of the region's principal creditors--private banks--in the development of the crisis. Robert Devlin rounds out the story of Latin America's debt problem by demonstrating that the banks were an endogenous source of instability in the region's debt cycle, as they overexpanded on the upside and overcontracted on the downside. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
International Debt Statistics (IDS), a long-standing annual publication of the World Bank, features external debt statistics and analysis for the 120 low- and middle-income countries that report to the World Bank Debtor Reporting System. IDS 2021 includes (1) an overview analyzing global trends in debt stocks of and debt flows to low- and middle-income countries within the framework of aggregate capital flows (debt and equity); (2) a feature story on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Debt Service Suspension Initiative in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; (3) tables and charts detailing debtor and creditor composition of debt stock and flows, terms of new commitments, and maturity structure of future debt service payments and debt burdens, measured in relation to gross national income and export earnings for each country; (4) one-page summaries per country, plus global, regional, and income group aggregates showing debt stocks and flows, relevant debt indicators, and metadata for six years (2009 and 2015†“19); and (5) a user guide describing the tables and content, definitions and rationale for the country and income groupings used in the report, data notes, and information about additional resources and comprehensive data sets available to users online. Unique in its coverage of the important trends and issues fundamental to the financing of low- and middle-income countries, IDS 2021 is an indispensable resource for governments, economists, investors, financial consultants, academics, bankers, and the entire development community. For more information on IDS 2021 and related products, please visit the World Bank’s Data Catalog at https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/international-debt-statistics.
Eichengreen and Lindert bring together original studies that assess the historical record to see what lessons can be learned for resolving today's crisis.
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.
Peru stands out among Latin American countries as an example of successful economic reforms over the past decade. This comprehensive look at Peru's economy traces that country's journey from a debt crisis in the 1980s to having buffers in place that allowed it to emerge unscathed from the global financial crisis. The book examines the steps Peru undertook to achieve these results and extracts lessons to be learned. Chapters are written by IMF staff and Peruvian economists.
For dozens of developing countries, the financial upheavals of the 1980s have set back economic development by a decade or more. Poverty in those countries have intensified as they struggle under the burden of an enormous external debt. In 1988, more than six years after the onset of the crisis, almost all the debtor countries were still unable to borrow in the international capital markets on normal terms. Moreover, the world financial system has been disrupted by the prospect of widespread defaults on those debts. Because of the urgency of the present crisis, and because similar crises have recurred intermittently for at least 175 years, it is important to understand the fundamental features of the international macroeconomy and global financial markets that have contributed to this repeated instability. Developing Country Debt and the World Economy contains nontechnical versions of papers prepared under the auspices of the project on developing country debt, sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The project focuses on the middle-income developing countries, particularly those in Latin America and East Asia, although many lessons of the study should apply as well to other, poorer debtor countries. The contributors analyze the crisis from two perspectives, that of the international financial system as a whole and that of individual debtor countries. Studies of eight countries—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, South Korea, and Turkey—explore the question of why some countries succumbed to serious financial crises while other did not. Each study was prepared by a team of two authors—a U.S.-based research and an economist from the country under study. An additional eight papers approach the problem of developing country debt from a global or "systemic" perspective. The topics they cover include the history of international sovereign lending and previous debt crises, the political factors that contribute to poor economic policies in many debtor nations, the role of commercial banks and the International Monetary Fund during the current crisis, the links between debt in developing countries and economic policies in the industrialized nations, and possible new approaches to the global management of the crisis.
