Talk:Debt of developing countries

Need for serious revision
The leading paragaphs are very poorly written and full of mistakes. I'm removing the term "Majority World" since I've never seen it before in my work in delopment economics, and I've fixed some spelling errors, but somebody needs to gut this and start over. 203.199.50.16 09:56, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Untitled
i agree. it also relies too much on information from Jubilee USA--authors need to diversify their sources.--67.80.25.183 22:29, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Heading
I find it odd that the article page is called "Developing countries' debt", yet the first line calls it third world countries debt. I'm not sure if this is worth editing or not.

The established term for this concept is "Third World Debt" and that's where the article should be located. Controversy over the term "Third World" (ill-founded, incidentally - its origin is a reference to the Third Estate of the French Revolution) can be mentioned but it is not the place of an encyclopedia to determine the nomenclature.203.199.50.16 09:56, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Totally agree. If there's no dissent, it should be moved (renamed); the article is, incidentally, listed under countering systematic bias as one needing attention. – Kieran T  ( talk

How about the definition for "unpayable debt" in the first paragraph, is this definition legitimate or should it be cited? It seems like a very specific definition for a term that could have many definitions, and not only to third-world debt.--MrNiceGuy1113 (talk) 16:34, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Numbers
I'd be interested in seeing numbers. How much do the different developing countries owe, and to whom?

Agreed. Is there any official information regarding who owes how much to who, how much is being paid, comparisons with amount of aid received? Most information I can find contains very few figures and those that do are ambiguous or contradict each other.
 * I can't reference this except for in John Perkin's book Confessions of an Economic Hitman, but sometimes the debt is repaid in things that aren't necessarily monetary. The country that is indebted may end up giving a United Nations vote in favor of the U.S. or things such as this.  Look things like this up if you think it could be relevant to this section.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by MrNiceGuy1113 (talk • contribs) 16:42, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Wow, I wrote this comment ages ago, I was really hoping for a reply by now...for this article to make sense we need to know how much is being paid compared with how much is being received? Kernow 13:13, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Expansion request
Nice things to have here:
 * Positions pro and con by more people (intellectuals, economists of different schools, even the Catholic Church).
 * The issue of writing off debt of countries affected by catastrophes (the 2004 tsunami is one, but also consider Central America and El Niño, etc.).
 * I agree with this notion. I know Nicaragua was severely affected by Hurricane Mitch but am not sure how much more debt it gained because of the hurricane.--MrNiceGuy1113 (talk) 16:51, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

--Pablo D. Flores 01:21, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Top-ten (or 20 or whatever) of debtors and creditors.
 * I can write something about Argentina's debt and default, if pressed...
 * Responsibility of creditors (e. g. in Argentina, the IMF recommended measures which depressed the economy).

It may also be nice if there were a section that included privatization of companies in developing countries and how that affects their debt situation.--MrNiceGuy1113 (talk) 16:50, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

On It
Will start working on the above list immediately

Kestrel76 01:14, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Numbers II (scales)
I didn't specially appreciate 68.35.125.94 changing "thousand millions" to "billions", but I'm not sure if this is a problem. By the context one can guess that a billion means 10^9 and not 10^12, but "thousand million" is completely unambiguous, and in most non-English-speaking countries 1 billion = 10^12. Numbers mentions no policy or guideline. What should we do? --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 10:48, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

This is an article written in American English. Leave it as it is. Robert (talk) 15:06, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Sketchy on certain details
This entire article is extremely sketchy on certain details. How exactly does the debt from commercial banks to indebted countries become the responsibility of governments and taxpayers? As I understand it government legislatures are responsible for passing laws, not lending monies. Central banks of nations manange the money supplies in their own country and are the banker of last resort, but only to other banks in that nation, certainly not to other nations.

Also, if there is bad debt, how is this any different from any other debt that is loaned to anyone else? If banks made poor decisions on lending money, then they should should simply write it off in stead of attempting to turn it into a social issue. If they run into problems there is always the deposit insurance program in most countries.

"Unpayable debt"
The second paragraph currently refers to "unpayable debt," where the interest payments are greater than a country's GDP. As far as I know, no such situation has ever existed. It is perfectly possible for a country to borrow more than its GDP stock at any point in time - Japan and Italy have been that way for a while - but for the interest payments to be greater than its entire annual output, it would have to borrow many times its own annual output. This is akin to someone in poverty borrowing $1 million US - which no lender would ever allow (and probably infeasible outside of really small countries). There are many countries that have had interest payments that are larger than GDP growth - which is unsustainable in the long run, but easily possible in the short run (and happens any time a country goes into recession). --DMG413 02:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I totally agree with the above statement. "Unpayable debt" seems sketchy and should no doubt be referenced if it is to be used.--MrNiceGuy1113 (talk) 16:53, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * It is telling that this comment was written before the 2008 crisis, which proved that large levels of debt had in fact been loaned by banks to people at large risk of default. If you don't have a concept of unpayable debt and bankruptcy, you essentially have a system of debt slavery, and encourage banks to issue loans to people in default with the promise of getting it back through extremely punitive debt collection over the rest of their life. That's not in societies best interests, banks simply shouldn't issue loans to people who can't comfortably pay them back. 69.138.196.15 (talk) 01:10, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Elaboration on euphemism?
"The banks didn't want all of this money lying around so it was leant to the third world countries. Debt then ensued."
 * The author needs to state why they didn't want the money? This is something that I believe, most definitely needs great explanation since this is what caused much debt.70.68.187.243 07:20, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

World Debt redirect
Redirecting from "World Debt" is plain wrong. World Debt != Third World Debt.


 * Agree. A separate entry for 'World debt' is needed. Perhaps with links to http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html or https://www.economist.com/content/global_debt_clock Bolarno (talk) 11:04, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Jubilee USA
http://en.wikipedia.org/shttp://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_hr.pngkins-1.5/common/images/button_media.png http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/button_image.png

This article is starting to look like an advertisement for some organization called Jubilee USA. Almost all the sources link to their website. Anyone have any sources to add that are NOT from this organization??? KristoferM 01:28, 21 March 2007 (UTC) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Button_strike.png

Arguments about Third World Debt
"The history of Malihttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/80/Button_upper_letter.png, for example, from 1968 onwards, provides a clear illustration of this."

You can't say something provides a clear illustration and then not give the illustration. A couple of sentences going into detail would be nice.

--66.7.117.110 (talk) 19:01, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

All wrong
The reasons these fgures seem all wrong is: a) the the numbers are in the bilions an trillions, not millions (re: Cia world factbook) and b) many of the figures are outdated, ie: Zimbabwe... think about making changes to these pages as they may give the casual reader misleading information about a very improtan subject... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.53.51.56 (talk) 05:10, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

This is a page that needs to be constantly updated because so many things in international economics and global politics is changing.--MrNiceGuy1113 (talk) 16:55, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Heavy Bias
"However, this is not an argument that can withstand a glance at the state of the essential services supposedly being provided by many of the heavily indebted countries." Who wrote this article? The Jubilee Debt Coalition? I don't have a great deal of time to spare, but could somebody please sort out the horrible POV bias of this article? Laurellien (talk) 10:33, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

There are no references to reasoned arguments against cancelling third world debt, and much of this appears to have been lifted, wholesale, from the Jubilee Debt Coalition Website. Wikipedia should present the facts and a balanced presentation of opinions, it shouldn't be a vehicle for pamphleteering.Laurellien (talk) 10:48, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Robert (talk) 15:08, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
 * My AP Comparative Government class suggested the Jubilee website as a source for information about Third World debt; the instructor is a professor at Northwestern University. However, I agree that statistics and less critical, rant-ish phrasing are in order.
 * Not only bias but quality. This article is so bad it almost cannot be fixed by editing, it is better to delete everything and start with a stub (yes it is that bad) --Inayity (talk) 10:42, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Review
The article's sources check out appropriately, the links all work properly and there are no apparent signs of plagiarism. The article however, does show a little bias in regards to the fact that there seems to be some criticism of developed nations and the role they play in causing debt.Mattchasman (talk) 03:38, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

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