Getting
Involved
Use every opportunity to speak to leaders about JDC.
Ray gives John Battle MP a copy of the "Unfinished Business" Report.
We always have vacancies for volunteers...details
Jubillee
Congregations and Schools
Book a speaker about third world Debt ..contact
Form a new
JDC Group
Micah Challenge .. sign
the call
Write to members of the House of Lords, your MEP's
and MP asking them to
sign...
Organise or Join a Book Club....details
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WE’RE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT
For a long time it has been possible to
think of the debt of poor countries in the words of Neville Chamberlain
as a “quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom
we know nothing”. But as Ann Pettifor of Jubilee 2000
predicted in her 2003 book “The Coming First World Debt
Crisis” the crisis has come home to hit us too.
There are similarities. In both rich and poor countries debts may be
result of criminal dishonesty, through loans given to people up to no
good and unlikely to repay them. Debts may also have risen among people
or businesses that were unlucky or just taking too many risks, such as
betting that the value of houses would always go on growing. That
should have been spotted by lenders even more than borrowers. Old
fashioned bank managers may not have had today’s technical tools
but they were good judges of character: which of their
prospective clients was clever and reliable enough to repay a loan with
interest. Instead in the last few years borrower and lender have
connived at risky deals – sub prime mortgages are just one
example.
But there are also differences. In our rich world, if people can't
repay their debts we no longer throw them into prison; there is the
option of bankruptcy. They have their finances sorted out, take a
step backwards and start all over again. If the matter comes to court,
debts may not be enforced if they are found to be dishonest, odious or
taking away the means of staying alive.
If only that applied to poor countries! Some of their debts have been
odious, for example those to the dictators Mobutu or Marcos. Some were
unlucky, as when commodity prices unexpectedly slumped or oil prices
unexpectedly rose. And some were attached to highly risky enterprises
right from the start by lenders who should have known better.
Unfortunately there is not an impartial court to sort things out; it is
the lending organisations, the World Bank and IMF and national
governments who are judge and jury in their own case. Relief has been
given to poor countries, but so often too little and too late; Haiti is
still having to pay back interest even after three major hurricanes and
four fifths of the population living on less than two dollars a day!
Let’s hope that a 700 billion dollar bail-out gets the
US economy out of its present hole. But it’s a sobering thought
than about a half of that would get rid of most of the debts of poor
countries and help them achieve the Millennium Development Goals. I
only hope that, when our public realises just how much we in
the rich countries owe, they will be more sympathetic to
those in the same boat even if their cabins are some way
below the waterline.
John Nightingale Chairman of JDC Birmingham
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