Monetary and Financial Reform: The North-South Controversy

Kenneth M. Glazier was Chief Librarian Emeritus at the University of Calgary, Alberta.

Pierre Trudeau brought the words “North-South dialogue” into our vocabulary and concerns by his travels and speeches on the relations between industrialized and developing countries. This work by Deborah M.R. Coyne, based on the author’s thesis for a M. Phil. degree at Oxford, is published by the North-South Institute in Ottawa because of their interest in the research material in this area. The primary emphasis is on the financial problems of the poorer countries of the world and their need for substantial sums of money from the international banks, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group. Because of the default in repayments on the enormous sums loaned to the Third World countries, the multinational banks have suffered staggering losses, which in turn has influenced their performance in Canada, in Britain, and on the Continent. There is also the realization that very few, if any, of these debts will ever be repaid. This critical situation has prompted the developing countries to demand major reforms in the world’s monetary and financial system.

This study, intended mainly for the non-specialist, is a scholarly work setting forth, with the use of statistics and extensive bibliography, the background to the present situation and offering some proposals for debt relief. The work is primarily an academic paper on how the banks and the developing countries got into the present position. No panaceas are offered for this world-wide and threatening problem.