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Article: Talking Turkey to Debtors; What We Can Learn From the Ottoman Empire's Fiscal Fiasco
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- April 23, 1989
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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FOR ALL the current hubbub over Third World debt relief, the fact
is that the basic ingredients for an international "debt crisis"
haven't changed in more than a hundred years:
You start with overeager lenders in the West, who have visions of
railways in the deserts and factories in the jungles; you add
corrupt and incompetent local rulers, who are all too eager to take
the western loans and slip a substantial portion of the money into
their own pockets. Before long, the loans default and the crisis
begins.
That's how it happened in the 1870s with what was arguably the
world's first great debt crisis-the collapse and renegotiation of the
"Ottoman Debt." And it most assuredly has happened ...