INTRODUCTION/7
payments. This helped pave the way for economic success, with
14 governments of different political hues reacting simulta
neously and implementing policies focused more than ever on
domestic markets. During the 1980s debt crisis, the United
States and the other main capitalist powers imposed country-by-
country negotiations and came out on top (Chapters 6 and 7).
- The Third World and Eastern Bloc debt crisis is closely
intertwined with the first stages of the deregulation of financial
markets in the second half of the 1960s (Chapters 5 and 7).
2 0. The Third World grew rapidly from the second half of the 1960s
until the end of the 1970s. Private banks, the World Bank and
governments in the North (especially through export credits)
pursued an active policy of low-interest loans, or even negative-
interest loans. For countries of the South at the time, borrowing
was therefore a very interesting proposition, especially as export
earnings were on the rise thanks to an increase in the volume of
exports to the North. Governments in the North encouraged
such borrowing in order to find outlets for their goods. For their
part, private banks held a considerable volume of capital on
deposit and were on the lookout for investments, even high-risk
ones (Chapters 5, 7, 9, 10, 14 and 16).
- The Third World debt crisis, which began in 1982, was due to
the sudden increase in interest rates decided by the US Federal
Reserve at the end of 19 7 9, the drop in export earnings (creating
a trade deficit for the South) and the suspension of bank loans
(Chapter 7).
- The governments of the North and South, the multilateral
financial institutions (IMF, World Bank) and the big private
banks managed the Third World debt crisis in such a way as to
force Third World and Eastern European countries - which had
acquired real industrial and even financial power - into a cycle
of dependence. The Southeast Asian crisis can be expected to
produce similar results (Chapter 16). As for the least developed
countries of the Third World, which had not gone through a
cumulative experience of industrialisation, their subordination
to the main industrialised countries has merely been deepened
(Chapters 10, 11, 14, 15 and 16).
- The international lenders, the IMF, the World Bank, the Paris
Club (which brings together the North's governments in their
capacity as lenders; see glossary) and the London Club (which
