Blogs

Anna Gibson, Research Associate, Re-Define

Development actors have long argued for an overarching international mechanism that would resolve sovereign debt crises in a fair, transparent, and consistent manner. Such a mechanism would assist poor countries that often suffocate under unsustainable levels of (sometimes odious) debt, lacking the political power and legal rights to negotiate with their creditors in an impartial and efficient forum. It would make handling sovereign debt problems less messy, more predictable, and the burden sharing simpler and fairer. It would also provide incentives to curtail irresponsible lending policies on behalf of creditors.

Re-Define Managing Director Sony Kapoor sat down with the Real News Network on one of his visits to Washington DC and gave a series of wide-ranging interviews on the difficulty of getting the right financial regulation, the extreme fragility of the economic recovery, the sheer scale of the problem of rising unemployment and stagnating wages, the problems of collective action faced by institutions and governments and a number of other topical issues including the question of what should be done with institutions such as Goldman Sachs.