Third World Debt

This volume is the record of a conference held in March 1989 that centered on a departure from the basic U.S. policy toward the long-standing problem of third world debt.Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady took the occasion of the conference to announce that officially sponsored reduction of debt principal and debt interest should henceforth be an integral part of debt strategy. Promptly labeled the Brady Plan, the secretary’s statement has since been the subject of extensive debate at home and abroad. Now that it has been given official sanction, debt service reduction has become an inescapable feature of the ongoing effort to manage and resolve the debt problem.

This volume considers the implications of introducing debt and debt service reduction into the preexisting menu of policies and, more specifically, to suggest the conditions under which it can be expected to hasten the removal of the third world debt problem from the international economic agenda.