[lbo-talk] Drop the Debt

Patrick Bond pbond at mail.ngo.za
Sun Oct 16 10:41:23 PDT 2005


----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
> I wrote a speculative passage in Wall Street that involved millions of
> Americans suddenly writing "non serviam" on their Visa bill, conceding
> that was unlikely, but that stranger things have happened.

The populist group El Barzon organised more than a million Mexican defaulters in 1995-96 after the peso meltdown and rise in interest rates. The South African equivalent was called the 'bond boycott', and at one point in 1992, the largest civic network (SANCO) called for a national boycott by black mortgage ('bond') debtors. The real interest rate had climbed from -7 to +6 and SA was in the midst of its longest depression ever. The boycott's purpose was to halt bank relationships with the apartheid regime. It didn't really work, but the head of the banking assn' called it a 'nuclear weapon'. Those were the days.

My own little riff on this theme is here: "Money, power and social movements: the contested geography of finance in Southern Africa" - in Money, power, and space, edited by Stuart Corbridge, Nigel Thrift and Ron Martin Publisher: Oxford, England ; Blackwell, 1994. ISBN: 0631181997



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