Capital and the Debt Trap is a research monograph by Claudia Sanchez Bajo and Bruno Roelants. The first four chapters provide a general summary of the economic instability afflicting the international economy at the time of publication (2011), noting that cooperatives have on average performed better than traditional for-profit corporations. The next four chapters describe four different cooperatives in four countries. The final chapter provides a summary. Cooperatives seem on average to last longer and be more responsive to the needs of customers and the communities in which they operate, because their shared ownership and participative management generally makes labor more flexible while reducing the incentives of upper management to maximize short-term performance at the expense of the