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The text is distinguished by a particularly lucid account of the 1945 Bretton Woods Agreement, the international conference that institutionalized American hegemony over global economics during the lengthy post-war period. By fixing exchange rates around the dollar as international currency, US bankers were able - as the text makes clear - to displace many domestic problems onto foreign economies. This is a crucial aspect of so-called American prosperity that few well-meaning citizens are aware of, but which has affected overseas relations in sometimes decisive ways.
In its dynamics, Latin American debt appears to be particularly unpayable. Growth in south of the border economies - as McEwan shows - has been critically undermined by excessive capital export required to service International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans. This international banker, now the target of world-wide protest, imposes payback conditions that include curtailed government expenditures and increased foreign exports, measures that drain these peasant economies of whatever growth potential is left over. Particularly disturbing is the informed observation that so long as these basic terms of trade remain unaltered, debt foregiveness, like aspirin on a cancer, can produce little more than temporary relief. People of conscience need to read this book.
The text is distinguished by a particularly lucid account of the 1945 Bretton Woods Agreement, the international conference that institutionalized American hegemony over global economics during the lengthy post-war period. By fixing exchange rates around the dollar as international currency, US bankers were able - as the text makes clear - to displace many domestic problems onto foreign economies. This is a crucial aspect of so-called American prosperity that few well-meaning citizens are aware of, but which has affected overseas relations in sometimes decisive ways.
In its dynamics, Latin American debt appears to be particularly unpayable. Growth in south of the border economies - as McEwan shows - has been critically undermined by excessive capital export required to service International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans. This international banker, now the target of world-wide protest, imposes payback conditions that include curtailed government expenditures and increased foreign exports, measures that drain these peasant economies of whatever growth potential is left over. Particularly disturbing is the informed observation that so long as these basic terms of trade remain unaltered, debt foregiveness, like aspirin on a cancer, can produce little more than temporary relief. People of conscience need to read this book.
