| | |  Business News | June 2009 
Vultures Circle Argentina
 Mark Weisbrot - Guardian UK
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June 9, 2009
| | Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (center), her Chief of Cabinet Sergio Massa (third from right) and Economy Minister Carlos Fernandez (second from right) meet with foreign bankers at the presidential palace Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires. (Getty Images) | |
Attempts by vulture fund investors to profit from Argentina's debt default are straining US-Argentine relations.
One of the differences between the United States and most other developed countries is that the US Congress can have a foreign policy of its own, and one that does not necessarily coincide with the objectives of the executive branch.
This is generally a good thing, since it allows the citizenry to have influence that it does not have in most European countries, and to limit some of the damage that the executive branch is often doing around the world. It was Congress that, under pressure from the anti-war movement, eventually cut funding for the Vietnam war. And in the 1980s a well-organised, mostly religious-based movement pressured Congress to cut off funding for Ronald Reagan's brutal insurgency in Nicaragua.
Occasionally, however, individual members of Congress - representing special interests - can be an annoyance when the executive is trying to maintain or repair relations with other countries. Such is the case with US-Argentine relations, which fell to a low point during the Bush years, and which President Barack Obama would like to improve.
Now comes Eric Massa, a freshman Democratic representative from Corning in the state of New York, introducing legislation on 20 May that would seek to punish Argentina by, among other things, denying the country access to US capital markets.
Some background: In December of 2001 the government of Argentina defaulted on about $81bn (plus interest) of its sovereign debt, as a result of a general economic collapse that followed a deep recession. In 2005 about 75% percent of the defaulted bondholders reached an agreement with the government that paid about 30 cents on the dollar. The remainder, with some $19.4bn, held out with the hope of getting more later.
The holdouts have a lobby group in Washington, the American Task Force Argentina. It is headed by former Clinton administration officials, who are trying to use Congress to put pressure on Argentina. The lobbyists include vulture fund investors, who buy up defaulted debt at a small fraction of face value and then use lawsuits and other pressure tactics to fight for the face value of the bonds.
If there is an injustice in Argentina's default, it is that the IMF - which had as much responsibility as anyone in the world for the deep recession that pushed half of Argentina's population below the poverty line - ended up collecting on its loans in full. But that is another, longer story.
The fact is that Argentina's default was an unavoidable part of an economic collapse. It was also a necessary precondition for the country's economic recovery, which began just three months after the government stopped payment on its public debt. In just under seven years Argentina's real GDP has grown by 66%, about the best performance in the hemisphere, pulling more than 11 million people out of poverty and reversing much of the damage that was done under IMF tutelage in the prior decade.
Argentina's debt before the default was simply unpayable. In the US and most other countries, we have bankruptcy laws that enable a debtor to get out from unpayable debts and start afresh. In the world of sovereign debt, there is as yet no comparable mechanism other than default.
Of course, it is quite possible that the Argentine government will reach a settlement with the holdout bondholders, and there has been some movement in that direction in the last year or so. A settlement would restore Argentina's access to international credit markets.
Ironically, the moves by Massa and ATFA makes it less likely that such a settlement would be reached, because the vulture funds they represent are playing a different game. They want their pound of flesh. They are gunning for the face value of the bonds and are willing to throw any of the more realistic creditors (among the holdouts) under the bus to get as much as they can. The vultures are therefore undermining other creditors, including current bondholders whose investments are not in jeopardy but would increase in value if Argentina had full access to international credit markets.
Who are the constituents that Massa and ATFA represent? A look at 15 bondholders that hold more than $25m each in claims against Argentina shows that nine of them have addresses in the Cayman Islands. One of these is NML Capital Ltd, a vulture fund affiliate of the hedge fund firm Elliot Associates (a member of ATFA), run by founder Paul Singer. According to Bloomberg News, NML Capital bought at least $182m of Argentine debt for 15-30 cents on the dollar. Singer has taken a gamble that paid off in Peru in 2000. He made a 400% profit from the Peruvian government through lawsuits and pressure.
The vultures will not get very far with Argentina, where not only the government but the political opposition and the Argentine people overwhelmingly are determined not to surrender to them. But they can make a settlement with the other creditors more difficult and also hope to throw obstacles on the road to better US-Argentine relations.
That appears to be the main potential of Massa's bill in Congress, and of course the ATFA lobby group's efforts: to create the false impression that the holdouts' debt is an impediment to improved US-Argentine relations. This is certainly not true for the Obama administration. But the opposition media in Argentina can exaggerate the seriousness of this congressional effort (which has almost no chance of becoming law) to try and undermine President Cristina Kirchner's government. It's all smoke and mirrors: an elaborate, well-funded international public relations effort.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis, and has written numerous research papers on economic policy. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy. |
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