Baker Says Iraq's Debt Is Unsustainable

DALLAS (AP) - Iraq's debt is ``simply unsustainable'' and must be reduced if the country's economy and government are to be rebuilt, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Thursday.

President Bush appointed Baker in December to serve as a special envoy in seeking an international deal to lower and refinance Iraq's staggering foreign debt - it owes an estimated $125 billion to other countries, excluding war reparations.

``These debts can never be paid in full, even under the most optimistic circumstances,'' Baker told about 500 people at a lunch sponsored by the University of Texas at Dallas and the World Affairs Council of Greater Dallas.

Efforts to enforce the debts could ``sink the Iraqi economy and, with it, all practical hope for a successful transition to a government of, by and for the Iraqi people,'' he said.

more…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3930304,00.html

the US can privatize all of Iraq's infrastructure to American companies, then give government backed loans to the companies that bought the ifrastructure, then ... etc, etc.

NT

I thought the oil was gonna pay for the war?

And OUR debt IS sustainable?

. . . in spite of its (nominal) possession of the world's second-largest oil reserves, exactly what hope does the James Baker/IMF Good Housekeeping Approval-Sealed model of global finance say about other countries not so geologically fortunate as the newly freed Iraqis now facing a bright future of unsustainable, unpayable debt?

Argentina? Botswana? Nigeria? Kenya? Ecuador? Peru? What about the bottom two-thirds of the planetary economic ladder? Think about it - if Iraq's " . . . debts can never be paid in full, even under the most optimistic circumstances", what about all of these countries, and all the others not listed?

Oh yeah, I forgot - PRIVATIZE - that'll fix EVERYTHING!!

and we're gonna protect it come hell or high water. And phooey on the Iraqi if they don't like it they can move to Haiti.

I also think that we are big lying thieving meanies.

There are dozens of countries being crushed by international monetory policy.

This can't be allowed to happend except as part of a general amnesty.