Two and a half years after Argentina’s debt default, creditors are up in arms over the country’s offer to pay back only a quarter of the Ł82bn it owes. But the government has so far refused to budge. Sophie Roell reports.It’s not a promising sign in any negotiations when one party is not willing to talk to the other and both sides seem as unreasonable as each other. Furious with the paltry amount the Argentine government is offering for the $82bn in debt it defaulted on in December 2001, the Global Committee of Argentina Bondholders (GCAB), grouping together holders of about $37bn in debt, is fighting back with its own idea of a fair settlement.
Alfonso Prat-Gay, Argentina’s central bank governor, talks to Karina Robinson about his plans for recapitalising the ailing financial system.In the run up to my meeting with 38-year-old Alfonso Prat-Gay, governor of the Central Bank of Argentina, I had met 16 top businessmen, bankers and economists who were uniformly charming and informative. So I feared for the famed trait of Argentine arrogance (the classic joke told to me by a host of locals is: How can you make a lot of money? Buy an Argentine for what you know he is worth and sell him for what he thinks he is worth). It was with a sigh of relief, then, that I encountered Mr Prat-Gay, who has that famed trait in spades.
Argentina's spectacular sovereign debt default may, ironically, change international rules on dealing with such collapses while coming too late for the country itself. Suzanne Miller reports from New York on why the IMF may finally have run out of patience with its old friend.