George (How the Other Half Lives) considers the Third World debt crisis as symptomatic of "an increasingly polarized world organized for the benefit of a minority that will stop at nothing to maintain and strengthen its control and privilege." She brings into focus the informal financial-political "club" of U.S. banks, creditor-country governments, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and argues that they "work together . . . to keep the Third World in line" (author's emphasis). In her view the IMF is an enforcer of the status quo with its "adjustment" programs that, as she forcefully demonstrates, contribute to the accelerating unemployment, malnutrition and ecological breakdown prevalent in many African and Latin American countries. Urging that the Third World debt problem be taken off the financial pages and put on the political agenda, she warns that "we are all passengers on the Titanic, although some of us are travelling first-class."