Three sovereign defaults in the past decade have each inflicted losses of at least 70% on bondholders: Argentina, Ecuador, and now Greece. In each case, creditor rights and the rule of law were trampled, setting troubling precedents that are worrying investors involved in vulnerable European...

Brazil is a country with long-standing ambitions for a major role in the world economy and in global governance, but its footprint in various measures of both remains relatively modest. On current trends, the gap between ambition and achievement will likely remain large, so we provide a critique...

The pedestrian narrative about the Greek financial crisis and default is that the country was fiscally mismanaged for a long time and failed to carry out needed structural reforms that could have improved economic growth prospects and enhanced the country’s creditworthiness. Therefore, a...

Here we highlight the contribution that private creditors have made to resolve expeditiously and even generously the many sovereign debt crises in which they have been involved. The road from debt restructuring to debt forgiveness – from reprofiling to cancellation, in the jargon of the...

Economists have always been interested in the workings of the financial markets, but most of them neither seek nor get the opportunity to work in a financial institution as a professional economist. Here we detail how (a minority of) economists became involved in the financial markets, and what...

The current episode (2007-09) may well be the first time since Latin America gained its independence in the early 1800s that a major economic contraction and financial calamity in the industrialized world has not caused a wave of currency, sovereign debt or banking crises in the region. What...

Mexico is retrogressing, becoming an unpredictable and risky jurisdiction for the adjudication of legitimate claims involving domestic and international lenders and investors. This conclusion follows from an analysis of the precedent-setting corporate workout involving a major Mexican...

The lesson from abundant history is that, despite decades of constructive innovations in international loan and bond contracts involving sovereign financial obligations, lawyers, bankers, analysts and investors are best advised to operate under no illusions: Sovereigns are indeed sovereign. To...

The question of whether financial intermediaries and institutional investors in the U.S. and Europe should welcome Argentina back to the global capital markets is certainly relevant -- especially for those with short memories who may be tempted by the high yields on offer to rush in without a...