If we paid off their debts, they'd be able to buy stuff from us again:
- Debts owed to the multilateral institutions such as the IMF and World Bank is currently around $153 billion
- For the poorest countries debts to multilateral institutions is around $70 billion.
$550 billion has been paid in both principal and interest over the last three decades, on $540bn of loans, and yet there is still a $523 billion dollar debt burden.
Of course, given that all we really 'make' anymore is hamburgers, and the only stuff we could send them would likely be deadly, chances are that they'll buy from someone else.
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