Word: ldcs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...have been forced to borrow voraciously from big banks, notably in the U.S. Now, that rising mountain of debt is casting an ominous shadow across the international banking scene. A growing number of monetary experts, bank regulators and economists are concerned about the ability of some less developed countries (LDCS) to pay off. They worry that a series of defaults could severely jolt the banking systems of the U.S. and other major lending countries-and perhaps imperil the Western economies...
...worse off than Italy and Britain. The root cause of their problem: soaring oil bills caused by OPEC's quintupled prices. While a small handful of OPEC countries have been amassing a $150 billion balance of payments surplus, the non-oil producing less developed countries, or LDCs, have plunged into debt by almost the same amount-$142 billion-to pay for petroleum. In only three more years, that debt load is expected to rise to a staggering $241 billion...
...called Group of 77 (which actually includes about 110 developing countries) pressed for the creation of a $3 billion Common Fund that would attempt to stabilize world prices for various raw materials by maintaining buffer stocks in them (TIME, May 10). By buying and selling from these stocks, the LDCS argued, consumers and producers would be able to keep prices within an agreed range, thus avoiding both the sharp increases that fuel world inflation and the steep declines that bring producers to the brink of bankruptcy...
...number of LDCs threatened to try to launch the fund without the major developed countries. Norwegian Delegate Martin Huslid won long applause when he announced that his country would contribute $25 million regardless of the conference's outcome. Without the participation of the large industrial nations, however, a common fund would not have adequate financial resources to be effective. In such circumstances, moreover, the fund could be transformed from a cooperative enterprise into a weapon used by cartels of producer countries against their First World customers...
...developing countries also pressed the Communist nations of Eastern Europe for concessions. The East Bloc has always argued that colonial expansion was the cause of the Third World's poverty and that the Communist nations thus were under no obligation to make "reparations." Unconvinced by this argument, the LDCs demanded more aid, better access to East Bloc markets and payment in hard currencies-but won no commitments from the Communist delegates...