Susan George

Born in the United States in 1934, Susan George has been a French citizen since 1994. She is associate director of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam, and president of the Observatoire de la Mondialisation in Paris. She is also one of the vice-presidents of ATTAC, France (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions to Aid Citizens).

She has long been a prominent critic of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the other global financial institutions. Her biggest achievement has been to "take debt off the financial pages and onto the political agenda". In the 1970s and 1980s, she began to spotlight issues and causes that were later taken up by thousands of activists.

In a succession on books, she has highlighted the huge social catastrophe visited upon Third World countries, especially in Africa, by commercial bank lending and loans advanced by the IMF and World Bank. Describing the role of the IMF/World Bank, she writes, "The IMF is a funnel for channeling public money to private banks".

Indeed, it is the determination of private banks to foist loans on Third World governments in order to make profits, which act against the development needs of the poor in those countries, which is the principal cause of debt. It is also a mechanism by which a handful of countries can control the economic structure and development of the vast majority of other countries and make them adopt trade and production patterns that serve the big transnational corporations (TNCs)...

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