Juntemo-nos aos maus...

Recentemente, na Bloomberg, apareceram duas peças de opinião, acerca da dívida da Argentina. Como o nosso governo é proponente de confrontos com os credores e até já há ameaças de credores, julgo que vale a pena estarmos ao corrente dos problemas dos outros para ver se não os repetimos. (Uma curta sinopse sobre a dívida argentina também está disponível na Bloomberg.) Mas se o objectivo é mesmo ser famoso, como parece ser o do nosso PM António Costa, então vale a pena aprender a reconhecer os instrumentos que conseguem tornar governantes famosos.

Da peça do Matt Levine, que mais parece o princípio de um romance:

We've talked a lot about Argentina's sovereign-debt saga, but now that it is perhaps drawing to a close I'd like to tell the story again, from a slightly different perspective. (If you want it from the regular perspective, you know where to go.) This version of the story starts in 1998, when Argentina issued some bonds called floating rate accrual notes. The FRANs were due in 2005, and their floating interest rate was based on the market yields of other, fixed-rate Argentine debt. The idea was that if Argentina's credit deteriorated, holders of these bonds would be compensated in the form of a higher interest rate. This sounds like a sensible enough idea. It was a terrible, terrible idea.

Fonte: Matt Levine, Bloomberg, 8/2/2016

Do editorial de ontem:

Before Argentina’s debt crisis is resolved -- and prospects have been looking better lately -- it’s worth pausing to ask why the stalemate has lasted so long. (More than a decade, but who’s counting?) Preventing these kinds of fiascos will require changing what happens when a government is unable to pay its debts.

The protracted impasse in Argentina shows what’s at stake. Increasingly frustrated by Argentina’s refusal to heed court rulings, a U.S. federal judge told its government not to pay creditors who’d agreed to settle unless it also paid the holdouts. He also forced intermediaries to help enforce his ruling.

Fonte: The Editorial Board, Bloomberg, 16/2/2016