Global Health Watch 1 in one file

25 Breaking the chains of debt: protestors at Sikh temple, Birmingham, UK.
income countries. As the World Bank notes (2004), ‘financing the US current
account deficit has been shouldered by official institutions in developing countries
that have invested reserves accumulated through good trade performance,
effective exchange-rate management, and the strengthening in capital flows.
Inflows of foreign official assets to the US amounted to US$ 208 billion during
2003, compared with US$ 95 billion for 2002, financing almost 40% of the US
current account deficit’ (our italics).
Neoliberal economists assure us that in a deregulated world capital flows
from where it is plentiful to where it is scarce – but the reverse is happening
today. Capital is being sucked out of low-income countries with large numbers
of poor people, and moved to high-income countries with large numbers
of the very rich. The injustice of transfers from the poor to the rich through
debt repayments, unfair terms of trade and excessive consumption of natural
resources has been widely explored in development literature. However, insufficient
attention has been paid to financial transfers that enable rich countries
to live off poor countries.
The poor finance the rich
The structural changes central to globalization that have created this
situation occurred in 1971, when President Nixon unilaterally broke up the
Debt relief
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