I'm suspicious about the G8 debt relief announcement.

If the 18 poor countries had "defaulted," some banking institutions would have lost money on their shakey loans. Remember, those loans were used to put those 18 poor countries into debt in order to extract resources and impose structural adjustments.

Now that the job of exploitation and structural adjustment is done, the banks want their money. Who is going to pay it? It seems like average-joe tax payers will be bailing out the banks.

Example 1: "Mr Brown later stressed the importance of the US agreement to pay between $700m and $960m more money to the World Bank over the next three years." It sounds like the G8 "leaders" are being "nice" to the 18 poor countries, but in reality they see the writing on the wall (no money is coming from the 18 countries), and are sucking money out of the tax payers.

Example 2: "But the G8 countries made it clear initial payments would come out of existing aid budgets." In other words, money that WAS going to go to international aid, will now go to "debt relief," that is, will go to pay the banks that were facing defaults.

Question: Why are the the G8 "leaders" doing this now? Are the banks in trouble? Is this another way of keeping the balloon inflated?

More research is needed.
.