During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to "lead a multilateral effort to address the issue of 'odious debt' by investigating ways in which 'loan sanctions' might be employed to create disincentives for private creditors to lend money to repressive, authoritarian regimes."

In 2009, the administration and Congress made moves to rein in loans and investments in particular countries, but there's no public sign of any multilateral effort to produce a unified approach on "odious debt."

Odious debts are at the center of a decades-old legal theory of international law. The argument is that when debts are incurred by a despotic regime to further its own power and repress its people, a democratic successor government is not obligated to honor those debts.

It's not clear from the text of Obama's promise that the administration intends to implement this broader theory of odious debt. Instead, it appears to be using the legal theory's terminology as a shorthand way of describing financial activities by governments that the United States considers to be bad actors on the international stage.

The administration has targeted loans in cracking down on at least one foreign country: North Korea.

In June, the United Nations Security Council, at U.S. urging, voted unanimously to tighten sanctions on North Korea after a nuclear test on May 25 as well as missile tests.

"U.N. Resolution 1874 includes a number of measures aimed at stopping North Korea"s nuclear proliferation, including tougher inspections of cargo, an expanded arms embargo, and new financial restrictions on North Korea, curbing loans and money transfers that serve as funding for their nuclear program," the White House said in a blog posting.

In the meantime, the House of Representatives passed a bill -- now awaiting consideration in the Senate -- that targeted investment in Iran, where the government is pursuing nuclear-weapons technology in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

H.R. 2194, which passed the House in an overwhelming 412-12 vote, would, among other things, require sanctions against any foreign person, business or government entity that "has knowingly made an investment of $20 million or more ... that directly and significantly contributed to Iran's ability to develop its petroleum resources." (The current thresholds triggering such sanctions are higher.)

But the legislation is not guaranteed of passing the Senate. Some worry that the bill's unilateral approach could alienate other countries with whom the United States wants to collaborate on a strategy to isolate Iran, while others say the bill gives Congress too much say over powers ordinarily exercised by the executive branch.

Ultimately, though, both the developments with North Korea and Iran are country-specific, rather than the broader, multilateral efforts seemingly envisioned by the promise. We undertook searches using Google, Whitehouse.gov and Nexis but found no public evidence that the administration has taken any concrete actions to advance this promise. So we're rating it Stalled.