Hi Ish; Re: "For 7 months the three countries wouldn't give one nickle on debt forgiveness to Iraq to help the rebuilding. Then Saddam gets caught with his personal files and the next day they all three start forgiving $10 billion here and $10 billion there. That's some coincidence."
Uh, the coincidence is that James Baker went and asked them for debt forgiveness and gave them something in return, LOL. These kinds of debts always end up with large amounts forgiven. There's a lot of room for forgiveness because they typically carry very high interest rates. What the lender gets is an agreement that the principal part of the debt will be honored, but only with a lower interest rate. The lower interest rate is backdated to the beginning of the loan, which is why the total amount of the loan (in 2003 dollars) is decreased. These loans date back to before the Kuwait war.
It's naive as hell for you to sit there believing that Baker went to Europe without anything to offer the lenders in return for debt reduction, LOL. I don't know the details of what he gave, but my guess is that he is handing out a guarantee that the reduced debt will be backed by the US. That is, what REALLY happened is that Saddam's debt just got taken over by the US.
You won't hear about the details of these agreements until they are signed and everyone agrees to the terms. But when that happens, which I don't think could happen until a new Iraq government forms, the truth will come out and you will see whether or not I was right. So my position is that essentially no one is eliminating Iraq's debt, but that instead they are only reducing it (in accordance with side agreements). Here's some more details from the news that you may have overlooked that supports this version of reality:
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It is understood that Russia's offer to reduce the debt must first be approved by the Paris Club, an informal group of creditors that co-ordinates debt repayment.
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Last week Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi agreed to forgive a substantial part of Iraq's $1.7bn debt to Italy, during a meeting in Rome with US presidential envoy James Baker.
Mr Baker has also secured pledges from the governments of Britain, France, and Germany to write off some of the money borrowed by the former Iraqi regime.
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news.bbc.co.uk
Now if your theory is that Saddam's getting caught put pressure on the countries that were against the war, then why is Japan, one of the "coalition of the willing" also reducing Iraq's debts, and probably under the same terms as the sinners? Here's a link:
Japan to pledge significant cut in Iraq debt -report
zawya.com
Note that with all these agreements, it is just the usual reduction in debt in return for a guarantee of repayment that is being bartered. Your fantasy that Saddam's capture had anything to do with it is just another stupid neocon dreamland fantasy. I'm not saying that you've lost touch with the simple realities of international sovereign lending agreements. My suggestion is that you never had a clue about them.
Here's an article from October 18 (long before Saddam was captured) indicating that Iraq's debts would be written down:
Those Odious Debts
The Economist, October 18, 2003
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The Paris and London clubs will no doubt belatedly negotiate some sort of rescheduling and writing down of, respectively, Iraq's sovereign and commercial-bank debt.
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odiousdebts.org
Nor did Saddam's capture result in any change in the policy of the lenders regarding Iraq's debt. It was always agreed that the amount would be reduced. Here's proof from Germany:
Germany opposes cancelling Iraq's debt
Business Day, October 24, 2003
Germany is opposed to the cancellation of Iraq's huge debt burden, a German minister says, calling for a new UN resolution that will share out responsibility for reconstruction. "I rule out a complete cancellation of the debt," run up by former president Saddam Hussein's regime and estimated at $130 billion (110 million euros), Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Minister for Cooperation and Development, said.
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odiousdebts.org
Here's the US explicitly guaranteeing a debt repayment by Iraq, note that it, just like the agreements with Russia and Germany, also includes a reduction in the amount owed:
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The US ambassador in Bulgaria, James Pardew, announced that the US administration would help Bulgaria receive its debt from Iraq.
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In a recent interview, deputy finance minister Krasimir Katev has said the government will be quite lucky if it succeeds to collect 30% of the claims on Iraq.
templetonthorp.com
Here's more details on Iraq's debt repayment. Note that the US loaned Iraq money too:
Betting on debt: Will Iraq pay up?
International Herald Tribune, April 26, 2003
Institutional investors have begun wagering that occupied Iraq can pay the hefty bills Saddam Hussein has rung up during the past two decades. They have been buying the country's debt for as much as 100 percent more than they paid for it as little as a year ago. In the next three to six months, they expect to resell it for twice that or more.
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About $11 billion of Iraq's debt now trades on the open market. The rest is part of a private tab Saddam ran up with governments such as the United States, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for its war against Iran in the 1980s and other endeavors.
In the 1980s, the Iraqi central bank, Rafidain, borrowed about $500 million from Commerzbank AG, J.P. Morgan Co., Banque Nationale de Paris, Credit Lyonnais SA's Union des Banque Arabes, Standard Chartered PLC and others. Most of these banks have long since written the loans off or traded them to other entities, so their stock prices stand to gain or lose little from fluctuations in the paper's value.
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Some loans to Iraq may be forgiven, and debt reduction is likely.
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iht.com
Learn more about Iraq's debts here:
jubileeiraq.org
Details on Iraq debt to the US:
jubileeiraq.org
Germany lent less money to Iraq than the US did:
jubileeiraq.org
-- Carl |
