The Debt Boomerang

• New Internationalist, May 1993

Countless livelihoods and lives have been devastated by so-called structural adjustement imposed by the International Monetary Fund and world bank in a misguided attempt to deal with the problem of debt in the third world. But debtor nations in the third wolrd are not the only victims of the present crisis.
In an unsettling but lucid critique, The Debt boomerang shows that we in the North must also pay the price of World bank and IMF policies that have accelerated deforestation, encouraged mass migrations, fuelled an expanding drug trade and heightened global instability and conflict. Our taxes underwrite the irresponsible and short-sighted load policies of the banks, and sustain the downward spiral of global indebtedness.
‘We must all read Susan George’s new book… a must for all those who are determined to shake the complacency of the developed world, and in so doing, find a way of resolving the problems of the debt to the benefit of all mankind’
- Robin Stott, Global Security
Susan George is an Associate Director of the Transnational Institute and the author of several books on North-South issues including How the Othe Half Dies, A Fate Worse than debt, and Ill Fares the Land. She also serves on the International Board of Greenpeace.