This means that if the currencies of Third World countries take a battering, as they so often do, the cost of their debt rises. Their negotiating position is thus continuously being weakened. By the end of 1998 half the population of Indonesia is likely to join the millions in sub-Saharan Africa who live below the poverty line. As long as this system reigns, gross inequality will prevail even if we do decide to cancel Third World debt. As long as commercial banks are given the privilege of creating most of the world's money through making loans, this pattern will go on being replicated, albeit in a milder form, throughout the industrialized countries too.
Banks find many ways of protecting their interests.
This one in Mexico City takes a subtle approach. Abraham Lincoln knew this already in 1865, the year he produced his potentially groundbreaking Monetary Policy. In it he argued that the Government should create, issue and circulate 'all the currency and credit necessary to satisfy the spending power of the Government and that of consumers'. Democracy will rise superior to the money power. One can only dream about how different the world might be today.