The transnational debt architecture and emerging markets: The politics of paradoxes and punishment

Third World Quarterly

Volumn 26, Issue 6, 2005, Pages 927-949

  Soederberg, Susanne ^a  

^a QUEEN S UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; MARKET; MODEL;

ARGENTINA; SOUTH AMERICA;

EID: 32144456385     PISSN: 01436597     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01436590500089257     Document Type: Article

References (105)

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8. Middle-income countries, or emerging markets, will be the focus of this paper for one important reason: Unlike low-income countries, many of which are subsumed under the World Bank's 1996 Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, middle-income countries receive the highest amount of private loans in the form of foreign portfolio investment (cf IMF's Global Development Finance, various years). Based on calculations using the Atlas Method and Gross National Income (GNI), the World Bank has three main country categories: Low income (average annual income $735 or less); lower middle income ($736-$2935); upper middle income ($2936-$9075); and high income ($9076 or more). See, for example, http://www.worldbank.org/ data/countryclass/countryclass.html.
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13. Although American power is not explicitly discussed in this article, because of space limitations, I assume that US power, or what I refer to as 'imposed leadership', continues to play a central role in the global political economy. See S Soederberg, The Politics of the New International Financial Architecture: Reimposing Neoliberal Dominance in the Global South, London: Zed Books, 2004
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42. For more information on this responsibility, see http://www.imf.org/ external/np/exr/facts/surv.htm.
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45. Ibid.
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47. The so-called 'Heimann decision' effectively assisted US banks to overcome the legal limits placed on lending practices to the South. For example, before this decision US banks were not permitted to lend more than 10% of their capital to any single person, co-partnership, association or corporation. The Heimann decision allowed the interpretation of a legal person to apply to separate financial units. Thus foreign governments could divide their bureaucracies into separate financial entities, allowing banks to lend without fear of hitting the overall 10% limit. E Kapstein, Governing the Global Economy: International Finance and the State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994, p 77.
48. Lipson, 'The international organization of Third World debt', p 614.
49. Ibid.
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53. Ibid.
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94. Interestingly, the SDRM was not based upon Chapter 9 of the US legal code. Unlike Chapter 11, which applies to corporations, Chapter 9 applies to municipal and other public institutions. Chapter 9 recognises that when a public government institution enters into insolvency, the subsequent debt restructuring must acknowledge human and social rights of the population in the form of, for example, education, health and other forms of welfare provisions.
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98. IMF, Global Financial Stability Report, pp 64-66.
99. One critic from the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, Lex Rieffel, went so far as to suggest that the SDRM was a reincarnation of the International Debt Commission (IDC), which was discussed earlier. L Rieffel, Restructuring Sovereign Debt: The Case for Ad Hoc Machinery, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003.
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