Introduction The fi rst, major international debt crisis occurred during the 1980s when a number of developing countries were close to defaulting on the loans they owed to western banks. These banks were so overextended at this time that there was a real danger that a major default would spark a crisis in confi dence. If a suffi cient quantity of worried depositors had then tried to grab their money and run for cover, any one of a number of banks might have been forced to close, thus triggering a chain reaction of other bank collapses that would have led to a full-blown international fi nancial crisis and quite possibly a 1930s-like worldwide depression.