Cataclysm

Already two global catastrophes have beset us in the twentieth century-the First and Second World Wars. In addition, the lives of millions have been changed utterly by great social and national revolutions. Economic crises, such as the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s, have destroyed the well being of countless millions across the world. There is no reason to believe that in the final decades of the twentieth century we shall be immune from more catastrophes.

Sidgwick and Jackson, who commissioned General Sir John Hackett to write The Third World War: August 1985 and The Third World War: The Untold Story, which told in the form of future history what an all-out conflict between the superpowers would be like in the 1980s, have now commissioned William Clark, former Vice President of the World Bank, to provide a future history of another potential catastrophe: a major financial and consequent political crisis. Could it happen? William Clark believes it could, and in this chilling scenario he shows why and how...

Scene: Washington, September 1987. The Finance Ministers of the world are gathering as usual for the World Bank/IMF meeting to discuss the crisis in the state of the world economy. But this time the poor nations of the South seize the initiative and renege on their debts to the developed countries of the North.

It looks as though the banking system of the North will be destroyed, but the British, Americans and Germans take the offensive and expel the big debtors from the Bank and Fund for their 'economic aggression'.