The spark that ignited he LDC (less-developed country) debt crisis can be readily identified as Mexico's inability to service its outstanding debt to U.S. commercial banks and other creditors. The crisis began on August 12, 1982, when Mexico's minister of finance informed the Federal Reserve chairman, the secretary of the treasury, and the Interational Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director that Mexico would be unable to meet its August 16 obligation to service an $80 billion debt (mainly dollar denominated). The situation continued to worsen, and by October 1983, 27 countries owing $239 billion had rescheduled their debts or were in the process of doing so. Others would soon follow. Sixteen of the nations were from Latin America, and the four largest, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina, owed various commercial banks $176 billion, or 74% of the total LDC debt outstanding. Of that amount, roughly $37 billion was owed to te eight largest U.S. banks and constituted approximately 147% of their capital and reserves at the time. As a consequence, several of the world's largest banks faced the proocess of major load defaults and failures.