Capital and the Debt Trap Learning from Cooperatives in the Global Crisis

The financial crisis is destroying wealth but is also a remarkable opportunity to uncover the ways by which debt can be used to regulate the economic system. This book uses four case studies of cooperatives to give an in-depth analysis on how they have braved the crisis and continued to generate wealth.

BRUNO ROELANTS is secretary general of CICOPA (sectoral organiaation of the International Cooperative Alliance for industrial, artisans’ and service cooperatives) and of its regional organization CECOP CICOPA-Europe. He was previously in charge of development projects in the field of cooperatives in China, India and Central - Eastern Europe. He coordinated the group of representatives of organisations of cooperatives in Geneva during the 2001-2002 negotiations on the ILO Recommendation 193 on the Promotion of Cooperatives.
 
CLAUDIA SANCHEZ BAJO is currently freelance researcher and consultant and chief editor of the Chine Actuelle review, Brussels. She worked at the information and advisory center of Argentina’s national parliament, then in teaching and research with various institutions in China, Germany and Brussels. She published, among other titles: The Political Economy of Regionalism – Business Actors in Mercosur in the Petrochemical and Steel Industrial Sectors in 2006 (Maastricht: Shaker Media, 2001), and contributed to The Political Economy of Regions and Regionalisms (Shaw, T, Boas, M, and Marchand, M. Ed, Palgrave, 2005). Her two main fields of research are the role of entrepreneurial actors in regional integration processes and cooperation processes between cooperatives (groups, chains etc). 
 

Introduction
The Mother Of All Crises?
Causes And Mechanisms
Shifting Control versus Ownership
Cooperatives: Importance, Resilience and Rationality
Natividad Island Fishermen's and Divers' Cooperative, Mexico: Managing Natural Resources to Generate Wealth
Ceralep Société Nouvelle, France: David and Goliath in the Glocal Economy
The Desjardins Cooperative Group: A Financial Movement For Quebec's Development
The Mondragon Cooperative Group: Local Development With A Global Vision
The Global Crisis: Mother of all Warnings