Noreena Hertz, one of the world’s leading experts on economic globalization, looks at the history of third-world debt and its crippling effects on people in developing countries.
Drawing from her impressive debt-relief campaign, fact-finding travels, and meetings with top-ranking officials, Hertz offers a probing analysis of the origins of this rampant burden and its evolution through the decades. With clear principles of justice, she uncovers the imbalance of power and misuse of corrupt dictators and reckless lenders.
Blueprint for change, endorsed by rock stars Few exhortations to action manage to blend a detailed objective analysis of the facts; a practical, well thought-out agenda for change; and the true passion that comes of moral certainty. Dr Hertz’s book somehow pulls it off.Her central case is that developing country debt is the legacy of bad decisions – bad on the parts of the lenders, and of the borrowers. The consequences are awful at the human level, on a massive scale, just as Bono eloquently described at the Labour Party…
Important and accessible history (and solutions) A highly readable and accessible book on an important subject that most people believe is too difficult to understand. Hertz’s history of third world debt, which takes us from the Bretton Woods agreements to the present day, is interspersed with stories from the author’s work and observations, such as Bono’s Jubilee activism and the author’s own foray to Russia as a consultant for the World Bank and International Monetoary Fund. Every American should read this book — particularly every…
Unmissable The relief of debt for poorer countries is an issue which many support but few really understand. Noreena Hertz is someone who knows what she is talking about. She formerly worked at the World Bank and in now Professor of Economics at Cambridge. She is also a tireless campaigner for debt relief.What I most appreciated was her ability to explain the economics in a way that was both understandable and convincing. She tells us how the debts came about – often during the cold war in an…