Then you've got the bloody cliff overhang.

Debt overhang remained a major obstacle to development in the developing countries.

There's an overhang of capital in the U.S., and the key is yield pickup.

The debt overhang severely hampered the efforts of the poorest countries to reduce poverty.

Four main issues were of significance to Africa's development debt overhang, aid, trade and development, and technical cooperation.

20. One of the main obstacles to sustainable development was the debt overhang and the debt service payment.

24. It is the accumulation of arrears, moreover, that is the fundamental problem underlying SSA apos s debt overhang.

Encouraging multilateral creditors to consider appropriate measures in the case of developing countries with exceptionally high levels of debt overhang,

However, while the HIPC initiative has removed the debt overhang for many countries, the burden of debt service payments remains high (see table 1).

Despite the HIPC Initiative and action in the context of the Paris Club, many African countries would continue to suffer from a debt overhang.

The amount of debt relief would then be determined on the basis of expected development assistance and the need to avoid a new debt overhang.

The debt overhang is having major adverse consequences for the fiscal health of African countries, and this may discourage domestic, foreign, public and private investment.

46. The least developed countries, comprising a total population of almost 600 million, continue to face numerous structural rigidities, infrastructural bottlenecks, mounting debt overhang and weak institutions.

Those overall trends, while indicating a somewhat improved debt position of developing and transition countries in 1997, mask a continued overhang of debt in many African countries.

Third, the secular decline in their commodity prices had resulted in a debt overhang that siphoned off scarce resources that could otherwise have been used to fight poverty.

More broadly, the ECB s marginal lending facility is an indirect means of monetizing sovereign debt. It is an even less direct way to address the private, related debt overhang.

Unless a timely solution to that problem was found, debt overhang and debt servicing would continue to contribute to the underdevelopment of Africa and the impoverishment of its peoples.

NEW YORK A paradox has emerged in the financial markets of the advanced economies since the 2008 global financial crisis. Unconventional monetary policies have created a massive overhang of liquidity.

With regard to Mozambique, creditors made an exceptional effort, agreeing to go even beyond the 80 per cent reduction given the very high level of debt overhang of this country.

Attempting to cure an overhang of private debt by issuing mountains of safe government debt is too dangerous. After all, when the private debt was issued, it, too, was considered safe.

High external debt ratios are also indicators of debt overhang which includes expectations of higher future taxes leading the private sector to transfer funds abroad rather than invest them at home.

29. Another area that called for genuine partnership was the resolution of debt overhang and the debt service payment problem of the developing countries, especially African developing countries and the least developed countries.

27. In sum, a speedy and substantial resolution of the debt overhang problem of SSA is critical if the present economic upturn is to be followed by sustained economic growth over the long term.

The ratio of outstanding debt to exports exhibited an improvement at 205 per cent but still remained above the 200 per cent threshold that is held to indicate the existence of a debt overhang.

But then the US Federal Reserve hid these weaknesses by engineering a housing bubble that led to a consumption boom. It will take years to overcome the excessive indebtedness and real estate overhang that resulted.

South South cooperation can also help to harmonize policies and rationalize supplies, thus minimizing the so called fallacy of composition associated with commodities subject to inelastic global demand and or to a structural surplus overhang.

17. International debt strategies have also evolved, slowly at first, towards the recognition that in cases of insolvency, debt reductions are necessary to lift the debt overhang and allow a recovery of the debtor s economy.

In Europe, the recession has lasted six years and counting in Chile, it lasted ten months. Tough regulation and record low interest rates left companies and households with no debt overhang and little need to deleverage.

Had Greece quickly written down its debt burden by two thirds, it would have been able to shed its crushing debt overhang. It could have used a portion of the interest savings to recapitalize the banks.

Close integration with the world economy through rapid liberalization of trade, finance and investment was seen as the way to remove structural and institutional impediments to growth, reduce the debt overhang and end periodic balance of payments crises.

This implies that further progress in trade liberalization will be slow. But slow progress is a far less important challenge to growth prospects than the debt overhang in developed economies, or infrastructure and educational deficiencies in many developing economies.

I can testify from personal experience that investors would flock to Greece once the debt overhang was removed. But the official sector cannot write down its debt, because that would violate a number of taboos, particularly for the ECB.

However, there is a need to provide an effective and early exit from the debt overhang problem in support of debtor policy reform efforts and to secure the necessary resources for the full and expeditious implementation of the initiative.

Moreover, even when public rescue costs are inevitable, they are typically small change compared to the economic harm wrought by the financial crisis and post crisis recession. By contrast, a large debt overhang may be intractable unless policy orthodoxies are challenged.

Although there will be no staff surplus, at least in the short term due to the backlog overhang, a major financial saving would result from the switch to desktop publishing for the United Nations Treaty Series, especially in relation to typesetting.

Economic growth can indeed continue to be severely depressed by a debt overhang even when credit supply is unrestricted and cheap. Many Japanese companies were left overleveraged by the boom and bust in credit and real estate in the 1980s and early 1990s.

16. Encourages the international creditor community to consider appropriate measures for countries with a very high level of debt overhang, including, in particular, the poorest African countries, in order to make an appropriate and consistent contribution to the common objective of debt sustainability

Moreover, the debt servicing requirements of the serious debt overhang from which most of these countries suffer create a constant drag on their ability to finance the infrastructure and trade related services which are so necessary to effective competition in the globalized economy.

As everyone at the IMF knows, a debt overhang is a vast unfunded tax liability that says to investors enter at your own risk. At any time, your investments, profits, and hard work may be taxed away to feed the dead hand of past lenders.

Despite their strong fundamentals, emerging countries still feel vulnerable in the face of the West s economic weakness, policy shortfalls, and political paralysis. Moreover, they know from experience that there are no easy and immediate solutions to the West s debt overhang and structural impediments to growth.

So, the prescription goes, why not generate higher inflation for a while? This will surprise fixed income investors who agreed in the past to lend long term at low rates, bring down the real value of debt, and eliminate debt overhang, thereby re starting growth.

Japan s deflation and economic stagnation over the last two decades stemmed largely from a dysfunctional financial system and a lack of private demand. The collapse of asset bubbles in the 1990 s left Japan s financial system and private sector saddled with a huge debt overhang.

If politics is the problem in Europe and America, only political changes are likely to restore them to growth. Or else they can wait until the overhang of excess capacity diminishes, capital goods become obsolete, and the economy s internal restorative forces work their gradual magic.

This would include, at a minimum, reforms of labor rules, pension systems, and anti growth provisions of tax codes. It would also include an aggressive attempt to reduce the sovereign debt overhang that remains a major impediment to growth and continues to threaten some European banks.

The clearest sign that the boom is ending is the IMF s forecast of 1.5 growth for the US in 2008. That may not sound like a recession, but the Fund s marginally positive projection primarily reflects the growth overhang from 2007, with hardly any new contribution in 2008.