A Proposed Debt Deal in Argentina Sparks a Constitutional Crisis

by Geri Smith, for Business Week, January 14, 2010.

For the better part of a decade, overseas investors have viewed Argentina as a pariah: After a currency collapse in 2001, the country suspended payments on some $95 billion in foreign debt—the largest sovereign default in history. Then in 2005, the government offered creditors, ranging from Italian pensioners and American teachers’ unions to Wall Street hedge funds, just 30 cents on the dollar if they agreed to swap their old bonds for new notes. About three-quarters of the debt holders grudgingly accepted the deal.

So it should be good news that Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is trying to return to the good graces of the global investment community. In December she said she would set up a fund backed by reserves at the Banco Central de la República Argentina to guarantee future foreign debt payments. She’s also preparing to offer the thousands of remaining holders of the older bonds—investors such as the Kansas Cattlemen’s Assn., the Nebraska Association of Retired School Personnel, and vulture funds that bought in after the default—another chance to swap them for new notes at the same steep discount offered in 2005. The goal is to restore her government’s access to financing and tap into global demand for debt that pays higher yields than U.S. and European treasury bonds…(continue reading)