Saturday, October 25, 2003

Why are Iraq's debts not on the table?

Politics - World - s.f. bayarea forums - craigslist: "Funds for Iraq or for Iraq's creditors? < RoughJustice > 10/25 10:08:18

Why are Iraq's debts not on the table?

George Will writes ' for at least the next two years, oil revenue will at best match Iraq's operating expenses.

Iraq already has $127 billion of debt, not counting approximately $100 billion of reparations owed, mostly to Kuwait, from the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

This unadjudicated reparations sum might and should be radically reduced. Still, McPherson says that external debt equal to 100 percent of annual GDP is 'not sustainable.' Germany's debt after World War I, which may have helped put that nation on the path toward World War II, was twice its GDP. Iraq's debt is now four to five times that level.

It would be fun to forgive the debts contracted by a regime that ruled against the interests of the Iraqi people, money owed to nations that opposed the liberation of those people who are saddled with the debt. Fun, but improvident: Chaos in international finance would result from making the validity of nations' debts contingent on the virtues, or continuity, of nations' regimes. '

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10893-2003Oct10.html

... Excuse me? Of COURSE they're contingent! When some tinhorn dictator or socialist mob takes over Ungabunga what happens to their old debt? It gets repudiated. Why should an Iraqi democracy have to suffer?

http://forums.craigslist.org/?ID=9836523"

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