ABSTRACT
There can be little doubt that the debt crisis has become the bête noire of north-south relations in the 1980s. Whilst Third World debt was recognized as a problem in the 1970s, the sheer volume of money involved has grown to the point whereby it is no longer seen solely as the problem of the less developed countries (LDCs), which sometimes cannot pay for their imports or are unable to meet the next instalment of a loan. Instead it is seen as a threat to the stability of the international economy, the potential cause of a new Great Depression. As such it has stimulated a voluminous literature analysing the causes of debt, its growth, and its effects on the international economy, and speculating on the question as to whether or not the great Latin American debtors (such as Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico) will default and bring the whole house of cards tumbling down.
