¹ On the problem of the ILOR and its role in a new design of crisis resolution, see Panizza, Ugo, “Do We Need a Mechanism for Solving Sovereign Debt Crises? A Rule-Based Discussion” (IHEID Working Paper No. 03-2013, Economics Section, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, 2013)Google Scholar.

² Radelet, Steven and Sachs, Jeffrey D., “The East Asian Financial Crisis: Diagnosis, Remedies, Prospects,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 29, no. 1 (1998): 1–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ For a literature review and the conceptual and empirical controversies on the studies of moral hazard and the IMF, see Axel Dreher, “Does the IMF Cause Moral Hazard? A Critical Review of the Evidence” (unpublished paper, 2004), https://ssrn.com/abstract=505782; International Monetary Fund (IMF), “Fund Financial Support and Moral Hazard: Analytics and Empirics” (Policy Paper No. 03-2007, IMF, 2 Mar. 2007).

⁴ On the long-term evolution of the IMF as crisis manager, see Boughton, James M., “From Suez to Tequila: The IMF as Crisis Manager,” Economic Journal 110, no. 460 (2000): 273–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Bogdanowicz-Bindert, Christine and Sacks, Paul, “The Role of Information in Bank Lending to LDCs,” World of Banking 3, no. 5 (1984): 17Google Scholar; Lissakers, Karin, Banks, Borrowers, and the Establishment: A Revisionist Account of the International Debt Crisis (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; Taffler, Richard J. and Abassi, Boualem, “Country Risk: A Model for Predicting Debt Servicing Problems in Developing Countries,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (General) 147, no. 4 (1984): 541–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ See, for example, Devlin, Robert, Debt and Crisis in Latin America (Princeton, 1989)Google Scholar.

⁷ See Kahler, Miles, “Politics and International Debt: Explaining the Crisis,” International Organization 39, no. 3 (1985): 357–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; or Wellons, Philip A., “International Debt: The Behavior of Banks in a Politicized Environment,” International Organization 39, no. 3 (1985): 441–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Vaubel, Roland, “The Moral Hazard of IMF Lending,” World Economy 6, no. 3 (1983): 291–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ See Rockerbie, Duane W., “Explaining Interest Spreads on Sovereign Eurodollar Loans: LDCs versus DCs, 1978–84,” Applied Economics 25, no. 5 (1993): 609–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Feder, Gershon and Just, Richard E., “An Analysis of Credit Terms in the Eurodollar Market,” European Economic Review 9, no. 2 (1977): 221–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; or Edwards, Sebastian, “LDCs’ Foreign Borrowing and Default Risk: An Empirical Investigation,” American Economic Review 74, no. 4 (1984): 726–34Google Scholar.

¹⁰ This is, in particular, the conclusion found in Rockerbie, “Explaining Interest Spreads,” 612–13.

¹¹ Sachs, Jeffrey D., Solomon, Anthony M., Ogden, William S., Wiesner, Eduardo, and McNamara, R. T., “Developing Country Debt,” in International Economic Cooperation, ed. Feldstein, Martin (Chicago, 1988)Google Scholar.

¹² Cline, William, International Debt: Systemic Risk and Policy Response (Washington, DC, 1984)Google Scholar.

¹³ Frieden, Jeffry A., “The Brazilian Borrowing Experience from Miracle to Debacle and Back,” Latin American Research Review 22, no. 1 (1987): 95–131Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Fernandez, Roque B., “La Crisis Financiera Argentina: 1980–1982,” Desarrollo Economico 23, no. 89 (1983): 79–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ For Chile, see Edgardo Barandiaran and Leonardo Hernandez, “Origins and Resolution of a Banking Crisis: Chile 1982” (Working Paper No. 57, Central Bank of Chile, Dec. 1999); for Colombia, see Ocampo, José A., “Crisis and Economic Policy in Colombia, 1980–5,” in Latin American Debt and the Adjustment Crisis, ed. Thorp, Rosemary and Whitehead, Laurence (Basingstoke, 1987), 239–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ Official memorandum, 24 Sept. 1980, IMFA Western Hemisphere Department, WHDAI—Country Files, box 129, IMF Archives (hereafter IMFA).

¹⁷ According to a report of the first meeting between Mexican government representatives and the IMF, “The Mexicans, who, I must say, proved their skills as stage managers, . . . blamed . . . external conditions.” “Mexico-Meeting with Creditor Banks at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,” by Manuel Guitián to the Managing Director, 23 Aug. 1982, IMFA Western Hemisphere Department WHDAI—Country Files, box 129, IMFA. On the Mexican external debt rescheduling, see Joseph. Kraft, The Mexican Rescue (Washington, DC, 1984).

¹⁸ Cline, William R., International Debt and the Stability of the World Economy (Washington, DC, 1983)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Sachs, Jeffrey D., introduction to Developing Country Debt and the World Economy, ed. Sachs, Jeffrey D. (Chicago, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ For a detailed discussion on the differences between the bonds and the banks’ loan markets, see Edwards, Sebastian, “The Pricing of Bonds and Bank Loans in International Markets: An Empirical Analysis of Developing Countries’ Foreign Borrowing,” European Economic Review 30, no. 3 (1986): 565–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²¹ Guttentag, Jack M. and Herring, Richard, The Current Crisis in International Lending (Washington, DC, 1985)Google Scholar.

²² Folkerts-Landau, David, “The Changing Role of International Bank Lending in Development Finance,” Staff Papers (International Monetary Fund) 32, no. 2 (1985): 317–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ Edwards, “Pricing of Bonds,” 565–89.

²⁴ “Mexico's Heavy Debt Doesn't Hurt Credit Rating,” Wall Street Journal, 11 Aug. 1981.

²⁵ See “Pemex Arranges a $200 Million Euroloan,” Dow Jones Newswires, 21 Aug. 1981.

²⁶ “Companies and Markets: Mexican Credit Margins Rise,” Financial Times, 11 Jan. 1982.

²⁷ “Warnings by the Fund on LDC Deficits and Indebtedness,” 8 Feb. 1982, Western Hemisphere Department Fonds, Immediate Office Sous-fonds, WHDAI Country Files, box 129, File: Mexico (1979–1983), IMFA.

²⁸ Paul Mentré, “The Fund, Commercial Banks, and Member Countries” (Occasional Paper No. 26, IMF, 6 Apr. 1984), 1–39. This paper was initially a report by an external consultant (Mentré, former executive director) commissioned by IMF's managing director to better assess the mounting debt problems during the first months of 1982. See document prepared by the Secretary to the members of the Executive Board, 4 Aug. 1983, IMF—EBD/83/200, IMFA.

²⁹ Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Annual Report (Basel, 1982), 124.

³⁰ Maes, Ivo, “Alexandre Lamfalussy et les tentatives de la BRI pour éviter un endettement excessif en Amérique latine dans les années 1970,” Histoire, économie & société 4 (2011): 59–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ Lamfalussy, Alexandre, Financial Crises in Emerging Markets: An Essay on Financial Globalisation and Fragility (New Haven, 2000)Google Scholar.

³² Goodman, Stephen H., ed., Financing and Risk in Developing Countries (New York, 1978)Google Scholar. For a theoretical model on creditor heterogeneity, differentiating between “money center” banks and “regional” banks, see Gai, Prasanna S., “International Bank Lending to LDCs: An Information Based Approach,” International Journal of Finance and Economics 2, no. 1 (1997): 59–713.0.CO;2-H>CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ U.S. General Accounting Office, Bank Examination for Country Risk and International Lending, GAO/ID-82-52 (Washington, DC, 2 Sept. 1982).

³⁴ Bogdanowicz-Bindert and Sacks, “Role of Information,” 17.

³⁵ Mentré, “The Fund.”

³⁶ Praveen Varma, “Sovereign Bond Defaults, Rating Transitions and Recoveries (1985–2002): Special Comment” (Report No. 77350, Moody's Investors Service, Feb. 2003), 3.

³⁷ Gaillard, Norbert, A Century of Sovereign Ratings (New York, 2012), 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ The other publication that also created a similar index was Institutional Investor; see Gaillard, Century.

³⁹ The Institutional Investor's 1982 country credit ratings also reported a downgrade for Mexico between September 1981 and March 1982.

⁴⁰ IMF, “The Fund, Commercial Banks and Member Countries, Annotated Bibliography,” 25 Nov. 1983, EBD/83/200, Supplement 1, IMFA.

⁴¹ An internal IMF report explained in 1978 that the GAO classified countries according to their credit standing. This rating was based on historical quantitative indicators and the country reports prepared by the New York Fed. It served the GAO to issue “special comments” to banks if the ratio of exposure to capital to an individual country was above 25 percent for high standing countries, but for the other two groups it would be 5 percent or 10 percent. The writer of the report was skeptical about the information used and the utility of the practice, as comments arose when the exposure limit had already been reached. David Finch, official memorandum for the managing director and deputy manager director, 5 Nov. 1979, Central Files, Central Files Collection, box 13, S150.1, IMFA.

⁴² Lissakers, Banks, Borrowers.

⁴³ Sgard, Jerôme, “How the IMF Did It: Sovereign Debt Restructurings between 1970 and 1989,” Capital Market Law Journal 11, no. 1 (2016): 103–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁴ These requests had to be registered, for which a form was established in 1978 at the latest. These forms included information on the requesting bank (and person) and the economic figures being sought. IMF – Contact with Commercial Banks and Other Private Institutions, Western Hemisphere Department Fonds, WHD Division Subject Files, box 10, files 3–4, IMFA.

⁴⁵ See Ernest Sturc, office memorandum, 21 Nov. 1977, Western Hemisphere Department Fonds, box 17, File: Commercial bank relations with, 1978–1985, IMFA.

⁴⁶ Lamfalussy, Financial Crises. According to Piet Clement and Ivo Maes, the questionnaire was initially suggested by Arthur Burns, then chairman of the Fed. Clement and Maes, “The BIS and the Latin American Debt Crisis of the 1980s,” in Peripheral Visions of Economic Development: New Frontiers in Development Economics and the History of Economic Thought, ed. Mario García Molina (London, 2016), 203–228.

⁴⁷ Other questions concerned balance of payments and indicators on the domestic economies of borrowing countries, such as GNP, monetary aggregates and prices. See “Report to the Governors on the reactions of commercial banks in Group-of-Ten countries and Switzerland to Chairman Burn's proposed checklist,” 26 Oct. 1977, box 7.18 (12), Michael Dealtry Papers, folder V, BIS Archives.

⁴⁸ Lamfalussy, Financial Crises, 12.

⁴⁹ The report referred to above was accompanied by the minutes of the meetings held with the banks in each of the participating countries.

⁵⁰ Devlin, Debt and Crisis.

⁵¹ De Vries, Margaret G., IMF in a Changing World, 1945–85 (Washington, DC, 1986), 180Google Scholar.

⁵² Vaubel, “Moral Hazard.”

⁵³ Folkerts-Landau, “Changing Role”; Guttentag and Herring, Current Crisis, 3.

⁵⁴ Anthony David Loehnis, associate director at the Bank of England, paper sent to Sir Kenneth Couzens, second permanent secretary, 28 Jan. 1981, 3A143/5, Bank of England Archives (hereafter BEA).

⁵⁵ K. Couzens to A.D. Loehnis, 3 Feb. 1981, 3A143/5, BEA.

⁵⁶ Westad, Odd Arne, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Time (Cambridge, U.K., 2007), 157Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ “Visit of Dr. Witteveen,” memorandum, 13 Dec. 1974, OV38/114, BEA.

⁵⁸ On the recycling of petrodollars and banking expansion in the developing world, see Altamura, Carlo Edoardo, European Banks and the Rise of International Finance: The Post-Bretton Woods Era (Abingdon, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Altamura, “The Paradox of the 1970s: The Renaissance of International Banking and the Rise of Public Debt,” Journal of Modern European History 15, no. 4 (2017): 529–53; Carlo Edoardo Altamura, “Global Banks and Latin American Dictators, 1974–1982,” Business History Review, first view available on-line at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-history-review/article/global-banks-and-latin-american-dictators-19741982/160E3C5ED3926973DADC63426FE55AE4.

⁵⁹ Standing Group on Oil Problems, Note on Eighth Meeting, 17 May 1974, 3A112/1, BEA.

⁶⁰ Sir Philip de Zulueta to Governor Gordon Richardson, 27 June 1974, 8A406/6, BEA. The Trilateral Commission is a discussion group that David Rockefeller created in 1973 to discuss the global agenda at a time when the idea of global interdependence was developing. The commission includes members from Asia (originally only Japan), Europe, and the United States.

⁶¹ Kapstein, Ethan B., Governing the Global Economy (Cambridge, MA, 1994), 65Google Scholar.

⁶² A. K. Rawlinson to F. R. Barratt, 17 May 1974, 8A406/6, BEA.

⁶³ “Memorandum on the Role of Central Banks in Financing Oil Deficits,” 27 June 1974, 8A406/6, BEA.

⁶⁴ The extract is reprinted in Goodhart, C. A. E., The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision: A History of the Early Years, 1974–1997 (Cambridge, U.K., 2011), 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁵ Press Communiqué of G10 Governors, 15 Apr. 1980, FCO59-1946, National Archives (U.K.).

⁶⁶ Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Annual Report (Basel, 1983), 118.

⁶⁷ “Les Euro-crédits: Contrôle étatique et rôle des banques centrales,” 11 Aug. 1980, 1415200610-24, Direction Générale des Services Etrangers, Banque de France Archives (hereafter BFA).

⁶⁸ Houpt, James V., Peirce, Mark, Schacht, Steve, and Taylor, Suzie, “International Activities of U.S. Banks and in U.S. Banking Markets,” Federal Reserve Bulletin 85, no. 9 (Sept. 1999): 599–615CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁹ Houpt et al., “International Activities,” 614.

⁷⁰ For a detailed analysis of European banking strategies, see, for example, Jones, Geoffrey, British Multinational Banking, 1830–1990 (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar; Gall, Lothar, Feldman, Gerald D., James, Harold, Holtfrerich, Carl-Ludwig, and Büschgen, Hans F., The Deutsche Bank, 1870–1995 (London, 1995)Google Scholar; and Altamura, European Banks.

⁷¹ Cline, International Debt, 25.

⁷² “Brazilian Railway Electrification General Electric Company Ltd. and Other Companies,” 6 Sept. 1976, 0200/0759, Midland Bank Archives (hereafter MBA).

⁷³ The general competition among developed countries for export markets had a strong financial component, as shown by the persistent efforts by the OECD Group on Export Credits and Credit Guarantees to reach certain minimum agreements on interest rates and credit conditions. One of the main issues discussed in the early 1980s was the problem of “side-financing,” which involved a credit or loan that, “though linked economically to the underlying export transaction, is made available to the buyer under a separate agreement.” See “Trade Committee. Group on Export Credit and Credit Guarantees Side-Financing, Note by the Secretariat,” 12 Jan. 1981, TC/ECG/81.1, OECD Archives.

⁷⁴ “Brazilian Railway Electrification,” MBA.

⁷⁵ “Brazilian Railway Electrification,” MBA.

⁷⁶ “Brazilian Railway Electrification,” MBA.

⁷⁷ “Brazilian Railway Electrification,” MBA.

⁷⁸ “Brief Notes of Interest,” 29 June 1982, HO/Ch/Mor/104, Lloyds Bank Archives (hereafter LBA).

⁷⁹ “Brazil Policy Review and Strategy,” 19 Nov. 1981, HO/Ch/Mor/104, LBA.

⁸⁰ Lord Boardman to R. Leigh-Pemberton, 25 Oct. 1983, NWB/554/3/32, NatWest Bank Archives (hereafter NWBA).

⁸¹ Lord Boardman to Leigh-Pemberton, NWBA.

⁸² Lord Boardman to Leigh-Pemberton, NWBA

⁸³ T. A. Green, note to P. W. Wilkinson, 20 Oct. 1983, NWBA.

⁸⁴ Claude Pierre-Brossolette to René Monory, 30 Dec. 1980, 81162, Société Générale Archives (hereafter SGA).

⁸⁵ Visit to M. Lagayette at the Direction du Trésor, 21 Nov. 1980, 81162, SGA.

⁸⁶ Bartel, Fritz, “Fugitive Leverage: Commercial Banks, Sovereign Debt, and Cold War Crisis in Poland, 1980–1982,” Enterprise and Society 18, no. 1 (2017): 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁷ “Note de synthèse sur les entretiens à Prague des 30 septembre et 1^er octobre 1982 de Monsieur Mayoux, Président de la Société Générale, à l'occasion de l'inauguration du bureau de liaison de la Banque,” 81162, SGA.

⁸⁸ “Note de synthèse,” SGA.

⁸⁹ See Bartel, “Fugitive Leverage.”

⁹⁰ “Bank of England: Problem Countries,” internal note, 18 July 1978, 80/5852, Barclays Bank Archives (hereafter BBA).

⁹¹ “Réflexions sur la politique à adopter concernant nos engagements sur les Pays Socialistes Européens,” 2 Dec. 1981, 81124, SGA.

⁹² “Note de synthèse,” SGA.

⁹³ BIS, Annual Report 1983, 125.