Born in Namur in 1954, Éric Toussaint lived in the mining village of Retinne, near Liège (Belgium), where his parents were teachers. Retinne had a population of 2,500 people of more than thirty different nationalities. At the age of thirteen, already present in the struggles of that time (opposition to the war in Vietnam and racism, and supporting workers’ struggles and the Prague Spring among others), he joined the students’ union branch of the FGTB. In 1968 he took part in launching a pupils’ movement that spread to several schools. It was the start of many struggles. In 1970 Éric joined the IVth International and helped to create the "Workers Revolutionary League" (Ligue révolutionnaire des travailleurs – LRT) in May 1970 and became a member of the Politburo alongside Ernest Mandel. Since 1980 he has been a member of the 4th International's United Secretariat and International Committee.
Éric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist with a PhD from the universities of Paris VIII and Liège.He is spokesperson for the CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt) - formerly called Committee for the cancellation of Third World debt - international network, of which he is one of the founding members, and he took part in the process that launched the World Social Forum in 2001.
For more than twenty years his economic analyses and reviews have been widely read in the press and on the Internet. He is the author of numerous books, the most recent being Bankocracy (2015); co-authored with Pierre Gottiniaux, Daniel Munevar and Antonio Sanabria (2015); and The Life and Crimes of an Exemplary Man (2014).Several of his books have been published in more than a dozen languages and have become reference works on questions of debt and International Financial Institutions: Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers (2010); and The World Bank: A Critical Primer (2008).[5] He has taken part in producing two manuals for conducting citizens’ audits.
This volume provides a thorough understanding of the Third World debt crisis. Eric Toussaint traces its development in the 1980s and 1990s, analyzes the role of the World Bank, the IMF and the political restrictions they impose, and assesses the stru
Publisher: Pluto Expess
