A person in debt can’t rise up, an animal with worms can’t get fat —

Mongolian folk saying

Presiding over skinned sheep carcases in Ulan Bator’s largest wholesale meat market, stall owner Gantulkhuur has become one small part in the debt binge rippling through Mongolia. She whips out a small ledger. Names and numbers in neat Cyrillic script crowd tighter and tighter on the pages, as her accounts have been taken over by retailers buying on credit. The retailers, for their part, are selling smaller cuts of mutton, Mongolia’s staple food, or cheaper intestines and organs as their customers try to eke out their savings.