This book provides an up-to-date, in-depth analysis of the nature of the international debt issue, the current situation, and of the way out of the current profound crisis. Written by an
international group of outstanding academic and policy experts, several of whom have provided information and advice to policy makers, for example, in the Basel process of reform in
international banking rules re-launched in the wake of the "subprime crisis" and in the Greek debt-restructuring, one of the largest such operations ever undertaken.The current debt crisis
is the result and the latest manifestation of the distortions, excesses and recurring crises of the international monetary and financial system that had marked the four decades since the
early 1970s. Ultimately, the crisis that broke out into the open, on an unprecedented scale in September 2008 with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, threatened the very foundations of global
finance and of the open liberal international economic order.The present volume is a follow-up to an earlier book on Globalization and the Reform of the International Banking and Monetary
System (Otto Hieronymi, Editor, published by Palgrave Macmillan in October 2009). One of the principal conclusions of the 2009 book was that overcoming the 2008 crises and its consequences
and preventing future systemic crises, including a possible financial meltdown, will be a long-term process that will require both political consensus and national and international
solidarity especially among the OECD countries. The book addresses the close links between sovereign debt, corporate debt, household debt and the shortcomings of the national and
international monetary and financial system, through analysis of the current crisis as the first serious challenge for the survival of the Euro Area.
