ABSTRACT

During the last years of the Second World War the world community gathered at Bretton Woods to consider the institutional framework required for international economic co-operation during the post-War period. The period 1979-1982 has seen the worst contradiction in world economic activity since the Great Depression. The President of the Republic of Venezuela, Jaime Lusinchi, stated in the UN General Assembly that the foreign debt of the developing countries is a reflection of specific shortcomings in the area of global financial and monetary relations, and in the dominant world economic system since the Second World War. The indebtedness of the developing countries, the chains of a new colonial financial dependence, will beyond any shadow of a doubt be the principal preoccupation of the international community for many years to come, perhaps even to the close of the century.