Category: Debt

Return of the Bond Villains

guildjames12 Comments

In 1825 a Javanese prince named Diponegoro touched off a five-year, ultimately unsuccessful, war of resistance against the Dutch colonial government. As detailed by Peter Carey in , one of the causes was a land-rent system imposed by the Dutch on the Javanese sultanate of Yogyakarta. Under this system, landowners were encouraged to rent their estates directly to European plantation owners for the production of cash crops. This had a disruptive effect on the local economy and the Governor-General ordered it halted. But there was a catch. As the land-rent system was unwound, the Javanese landowners were forced to buy out the plantation owners in order to get control of their land back.

Many had already used the rents to buy imported luxury goods, and they fell into debt paying out large and often inflated sums to the plantation owners. The sultan was expected to back-stop these debts using payments he received from the Dutch for granting them the right to collect revenue on the kingdom鈥檚 toll roads. This created a situation where a Javanese merchant travelling from Yogyakarta to Semarang had to pay fees to the Dutch toll road agents. A portion of those fees then went to the sultan, who used them to back-stop debts being incurred by Javanese landowners as they bought back their own land back from European plantation owners.

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Where Is the Risk in the COVID Economy? A look at shadow banking

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By and Andrew Moon

We are witnessing a public bailout of the private sector that dwarfs the bailout response to the 2007颅鈥�2008 Great Recession. Compared to the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) implemented in 2008, today鈥檚 mobilization of public funds through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act amounts to a whopping $2.3 trillion, thus far.

As we know from media coverage of the CARES Act, today鈥檚 relief programs are intended to support payrolls, corporate operations, and small business overhead. What we don鈥檛 hear from the mainstream media is news on how these relief programs serve, once again, to .

Unfortunately, few people are training their sights on that process 鈥� that is, on the actual mechanisms by which public funds are being used to underwrite not payrolls or job creation, but rather new sites of capital accumulation.

Just where are these new sites?Read More »

The perils of monetary policy in the global periphery during the Covid-19 pandemic

nreismx2 Comments

For several decades, countries of the periphery have been deeply in the grip of debt. The Covid-19-induced crisis has and thus increased financial vulnerability. Recent policy measures by peripheral governments and central banks have brought momentary relief, but ultimately represent a manifestation of the interests of finance capital to get the most out of peripheral economies as long as it is still possible. 

Because of the dependence of their currencies on international capital flows, due to the possible effects of political decisions on the movement of such flows. The enormous power of financial markets over monetary policy in the periphery is again becoming evident during the current crisis. The crisis in the global periphery is generally much more severe than in the central countries, not only because of often inadequate health systems that have been abandoned under three decades of neoliberal policy. As peripheral assets do not serve as a store of value, within three months, constituting a historically unprecedented capital flight. Factors such as the deflation of prices of primary resources, the fall in external demand for manufactured products, and the fall in cash flows due to decreasing remittances and tourism mean that financial pressure has increased even more. Consequently, peripheral currencies significantly depreciated with the beginning of the crisis, in some cases by as much as 20-30%, as in the cases of Brazil and Mexico.

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Sub-Saharan countries are taking on more debt, and women will bear the brunt of repaying it

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By Matthew Barlow,听 and

By May 2020, every African nation had registered cases of COVID-19. By late July, cases had . A key factor in Africa鈥檚 struggle to mount a response to the pandemic (although not the only one) is that years of debt servicing have eroded states鈥� capacities to build strong health systems.

Research on crisis and pandemics in different parts of the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), shows that countries will respond to COVID-19 in two phases 鈥� the fiscal expansion phase, which involves a series of stimulus packages, and the fiscal contraction phase, which is characterised by austerity. In the case of COVID-19, these phases will require significant levels of financing. In a region with predominantly , debt and donor aid have become an alternative way for governments to finance state obligations. Currently is below the 60% (danger) threshold, which is way below the crisis levels of the 1980s and 1990s.

However, due to low credit ratings translating into poor interest rates. By 2018, 18 SSA countries were at of debt distress and governments made austerity cuts to public services to service their debt obligations. In 2018, 46 low-income countries 鈥� most of which are in SSA鈥� were spending more on debt servicing than on healthcare. Annually, SSA countries were spending an average of $70 per capita on (supplemented with $10 external assistance), in contrast to $442 in China and an average of in the EU.Read More »

Abolish Africa鈥檚 Sovereign Debtors鈥� Prisons Now

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By Ndongo Samba Sylla and Peter Doyle

This piece was written before the Coronavirus outbreak. It is a timely proposal of action. Given the high exposure of the developing world to the virus in contexts of medical and other logistical shortcomings, the damage to their productive capacity is likely to be much more severe than for the advanced world. 听This fact is already reflected in particularly sharp virus-stirred capital outflows from these countries. 听All this greatly increases their exposure to the present global structures for sovereign insolvency, and the urgent need for those structures to be radically reformed鈥攁s the authors propose with the Pre-Emptive Sovereign Insolvency Regime (PSIR).

In a radical call for reform of the IMF鈥檚 pro-creditor and anti-growth approach to indebted countries in Africa, Ndongo Sylla and Peter Doyle argue that the continent has a choice to make. Creditors, using the IMF, must be stopped from forcing devastating output losses by imposing high primary surpluses.

Within a decade, just to keep up with the flow of new entrants into its labour markets, sub-Saharan Africa needs to create 20 million new jobs every year. This is a huge challenge. But it is also a thrilling opportunity鈥攖o harness the energy and creativity of all of Africa鈥檚 young.

However, after it reviews these issues in Africa, the IMF鈥檚 immediate message鈥攍iterally in the same sentence鈥攊s to pivot to 鈥榖udget cuts to secure debt sustainability!鈥�

That is plain wrong. For Africa to meet its development objectives, the IMF must radically change its pro-creditor anti-growth approach to highly indebted/insolvent countries.Read More »

Debt Moratoria in the Global South in the Age of Coronavirus

Christina C. Laskaridis4 Comments

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Official calls are mounting. On March 23, African Finance Ministers met virtually to discuss their efforts on the social and economic impacts of COVID-19. Amidst a broad recognition of chronic financing gaps to meet development and climate objectives, they called for a on all debt interest payments, including the potential for principal payments for fragile states. The United Nations General Secretary addressed the G20 emergency meeting conference call on COVID-19. Along with calls for medical and protective equipment, the need to was stressed, 鈥渋ncluding immediate waivers on interest payments for 2020鈥�. The World Bank President addressed the emergency G20 Finance Ministers encouraging bilateral IDA relief without missing the opportunity 听

replete with grand aspirations, but no timeframe specified to fulfil them, was vague in respect to debt issues and far short of what is needed: 鈥淲e will continue to address risks of debt vulnerabilities in low-income countries due to the pandemic.鈥� Hardly commensurate to the alarm bells that have been ringing over the past five years of growing debt difficulties in a number of countries.听Read More »

Misunderstanding the average impact of microcredit?

milfordbateman2 Comments

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Photo: . Microfinance center leaders tally the week’s loan payments in India.

By听and

A recent article on the 鈥�鈥� by Dr. Rachel Meager (LSE) has received much praise over the past few weeks. Meager deploys Bayesian hierarchical modelling to provide a new take on the argument in favour of a reformed system of microcredit. Her work builds on the data provided by six randomized control trials (RCTs) conducted by Abhijit Banerjee and colleagues (see ). Meager makes an attempt to exculpate the microcredit model from the awkward fact that its impact on the poor has been very much less than originally envisaged. She also claims to show that the critics have overstated the negative impact of microcredit. Microcredit should therefore continue to be a policy intervention, she goes on to say, but there need to be changes in the operating methodology for a more meaningful development impact to be possible in the future.

While seemingly a well-meaning attempt to explore the impact of microcredit, we were struck by the way that her overall argument appears to seriously misunderstand, and it definitely misrepresents, the existing research on microcredit as a development instrument. Read More »

The Curious Case of M-Pesa鈥檚 Miraculous Poverty Reduction Powers

Nicholas Loubere8 Comments

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M-PESA kiosk outside Kibera centre in Nairobi. Picture credit:

By ,听 and听Nicholas Loubere

Over the past decade the expansion of digital-financial inclusion through innovations in financial technology (fin-tech) has been identified by the World Bank, the G20, USAID, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and other major international institutions, as a key way to promote development and alleviate poverty in the Global South (; ; ). Perhaps the most influential and widely reported publication pushing forward this narrative is an article examining M-Pesa written by US-based economists Tavneet Suri and William Jack鈥�and published in the prestigious journal Science鈥�entitled ‘The Long-run Poverty and Gender Impacts of Mobile Money’. M-Pesa is a mobile phone, agent-assisted platform for transferring money from one person to another. It was originally developed with funding from DFID and has quickly become a darling of the digital-financial inclusion movement. In this particular article, the authors make the far-reaching claim that 鈥榓ccess to the Kenyan mobile money system M-PESA increased per capita consumption levels and lifted 194,000 households, or 2% of Kenyan households, out of poverty鈥� ().

Suri and Jack鈥檚 article in Science has sent ripples through the global development community and has served鈥�as perhaps was intended鈥�to solidify support for upping the promotion of digital-financial inclusion initiatives across the Global South. Importantly, the article鈥檚 claims of unprecedented poverty reduction have been uncritically picked up by all of the international development agencies and microcredit advocacy organisations, as well as by many mainstream economists, so-called 鈥榮ocial entrepreneurs鈥�, tech investors, and media outlets. Much like microcredit in the 1980s, fin-tech and digital-financial inclusion is now very widely seen as a 办别测鈥�if not the key鈥�to reducing global poverty and promoting local development.

In this post we summarise our recent article entitled 鈥業s Fin-tech the New Panacea for Poverty Alleviation and Local Development?鈥� (), which challenges Suri and Jack鈥檚 findings, and urges the global development community to take a second, more critical look at their study. We argue that the article contains a worrying number of omissions, errors, inconsistencies, and that it also employs flawed methodologies. Unfortunately, their inevitably flawed conclusions have served to legitimise and strengthen a false narrative of the role that fin-tech can play in poverty alleviation and development, with potentially devastating consequences for the global poor.Read More »