What do you do when your money runs out? Stop buying stuff? Or borrow money from your parents or friends? If you borrow, you can have what you want right now, but you have something new: debt. You owe somebody else money. Maybe that's okay for you - so you borrow some more. And more. Until one day, nobody will lend you any more money until you repay what you owe them. Then you have to save or find jobs to do for money so you can pay back what you owe.

Exactly the same thing happens for adults. Companies rather like people to get into debt, usually by using credit cards. 'Credit' really means money you are allowed to borrow before someone says 'stop and repay'. This locks people into an endless treadmill of buying stuff they probably don't need and then having to work extra hard to pay back what they owe so they can then buy more stuff they don't need and... Get the idea? On top of this money people borrow, the lenders charge them interest. That means if you borrow $1000, you might end up paying back $1,100 a few months later. So having your $1000 video camera instantly through credit means that you really pay $1,100. So the company that made the camera is happy: they sold it to you right away instead of when you could afford it. The credit card company is happy: you just paid it $100. But are you happy?

The debt business gets bigger and nastier when whole governments and countries are involved. Many of the poorest countries in the world owe huge amounts of money to the richest ones. This means that almost all the money the poor country earns from selling its products to others (exports) goes just to pay the interest on the debt. No money is left over to pay for schools or hospitals and all the other things people in rich countries expect to have. Of course rich countries do try to help by sending money and other things to help. This is called 'development aid'. Unfortunately, bad people may steal some of this. This is called corruption. So little of the money gets through to help those who are really desperate. Aid money that does get through may be used for things that are useless for the poor people. And worse is that much more money flows out of poor countries to pay the costs ('service') of their debts than comes in as aid. The result is that the poorest people in the poorest countries get even poorer. Many die of disease or hunger, especially kids. I think that's terrible!