[...] debt stocks have not reduced much at all. In fact, they have increased. External debt as a percentage of gross national income in the global South was 25 per cent in 1980, when the debt crisis struck. At the end of the first decade of structural adjustment, it was up to 38 per cent. By the end of the second decade, it was 39 per cent. In other words, structural adjustment failed even on its own putative terms. [...]