Matters of life and debt: How the American state made the market for the Global South's bonds

Abstract: Sovereign debt levels in the Global South have grown rapidly. By July 2020, total emerging market debt reached US$ 72.5 trillion as governments grappled with the fiscal shocks associated with COVID-19. Meanwhile, debt ownership has shifted from official creditors to private entities. Rather than multilateral and bilateral loans, sovereign debt is now principally issued through bonds. Many describe this shift as a triumph of market forces channeling resources from those who have to those in need. But the story about the evolution of the sovereign bond market isn’t quite so simple. In this lecture, I explain how the US state was instrumental in making, what are assumed to be private, sovereign bond markets. Drawing on exclusive interviews with senior US Officials and unique archival sources, I recount how the US attempted to actively manage debt crises from the 1960s on as it balanced the needs of financial capital with territorial control.

Speaker Bio:

Andrew is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. His research surveys how the evolution of the market for the Global South’s debt by interviewing investors, international financial institutions, legal experts, and other market participants. As a Trudeau Scholar, Andrew is interested in how inequality between countries relates to longer histories of uneven development and the growth of financial profits.

Previously, Andrew worked with the Institute of Urban Studies for six years in Winnipeg to explore how economic systems connect people and cities. He assisted national research projects on homelessness, income inequality, and precarious housing. He spent four years evaluating a Housing First approach to helping people transition from streets to homes. Following this, Andrew co-edited a book titled The Divided Prairie City as part of a larger national investigation on increasing income inequality. He has contributed to numerous reports about urban development, housing policy, urban economics, and sustainable transportation. Earlier he developed an expertise in the economic implications of international development policy and worked in Grenada to see the on-the-ground impacts of sovereign debt crises. Committed to public scholarship, Andrew uses his research to reframe public debates.