Crash Course: Developing World Debt

So you want to learn about the World Bank, IMF, and why ‘poor’ countries stay that way? Pull up a chair.

By Heather McGhee, Demos

So you want to know about globalization and developing-world debt? From Seattle ’99 to Students Against Sweatshops to recent anti-IMF and World Bank protests, these issues have become a hot cause celebre, igniting hundreds of thousands of young people in recent years. But why this issue, why now, and why us?

I’ve written before about how our generation has come of age with the rise of free market ideology in the U.S. — free markets meaning, of course, “let corporations decide.” But the revolution was not contained to our shores. In the early 1980s, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund began forcing Western business-friendly “development” policies—and the loans to fund them—on dozens of countries in Africa, Asia, formerly Soviet countries, and Latin America. Light on research, local input, or nuance—but heavy on ideology and inequality—these policies have contributed to the stubborn poverty most of us grew up believing occurred naturally across the “Third World.” As a result, in the 1990s, almost 100 million more people fell into poverty on our planet—while significant financial gains for the interests holding the purse strings resulted in a 2.5 percent increase in average total world income each year.

Want to learn more? Here is your starter pack for a crash course in corporate globalization:

Life and Debt by Stephanie Black

This 2001 film is the place to start. It is short on talking heads and long on the sights and sounds of the Jamaica we’ve all fantasized about since Bob Marley became an international icon and the favored poster subject for our college dorm room walls. But what we haven’t seen is how paradoxical paradise can be after corporate globalization cripples a once-healthy island economy. Spring Break will never be the same again.

Read the NYT review here. Rent it or buy it here.

The Field Guide to the Global Economy by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh

Cartoons, graphs, and even skits—it’s silly how simple the authors make the complex world of globalization appear in this truly entertaining and educational book. Until The Onion takes on the IMF, this is just about the best time you’ll have learning about the global economy.

Buy it here.

Globalization and its Discontents by Joseph Stiglitz

After “Life and Debt” and The Field Guide, you’ll be ready to hit the picket lines. But to complete the picture and get you inside, you’ll need Joseph Stiglitz, the former World Bank Chief Economist who came out with a scathing critique of the Bank, the IMF, and the Washington Consensus in 2002. While not without its faults, the book is a revealing look at the constellation of powerful interests and personalities who joined forces to shape our planet at the end of the century.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

If you’re a fan of conspiracy theories, James Bond or both, this new book is right up your mysterious, winding, dark alley. The controversial memoir that no big publisher would touch explains how Perkins and other “hit men” strong-armed developing countries into taking massive IMF loans that impoverished the nations’ poor yet lined the coffers of “infrastructure-building” companies like MAIN, Bechtel and Halliburton.

StopCafta.org

Angry yet? Good. We’ve got something for you to do. Right now the U.S. is considering a new trade agreement that would do for Central America what NAFTA did for Mexico and the American manufacturing core. (I know, it’s hard to remember those mythological American manufacturing jobs; millions have been lost in recent years, in part due to NAFTA.) Citizens, legislators and advocates from both sides of the aisle are mobilizing against it.

Global Exchange.org

Ready to make a real commitment? While there are literally hundreds of organizations involved in reshaping the global economy, San Francisco-based Global Exchange is a great place to start. From their Reality Tours and worldwide volunteer opportunities to their twice-annual Green Festival and online FairTrade store, the mostly young staff of Global Exchange is making another world seem imminently possible.

At 24, Heather McGhee is the youngest member of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos, a think tank you don’t know but should. Her experiences working in film & television, in the EU, and in politics & economic policy have convinced her of one thing: it’s all about who tells the best stories.