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WORLD POLICY JOURNAL
Searching
for Argentina’s Silver Lining Shortly after Argentina’s presidency and banking system collapsed in December 2001, and shortly before its currency and payments to creditors followed suit, a diabetic strode into his Buenos Aires bank. Like the rest of the country’s banks, it was under government orders not to allow depositors to withdraw more than $1,000 a month—not enough for the man to eat and buy his insulin. Wielding a hand grenade, he demanded his more than $20,000 in savings in U.S. dollars. When the police later arrested him at home, the grenade turned out to be a harmless World War II relic. The money was nowhere to be found, for the man had learned his lesson in 1990, during the last financial crisis, when the government confiscated bank accounts and converted Argentines’ savings into bonds. When his crime—if demanding one’s own money is a crime—hit the news, Argentines cheered him. Why, they wanted to know, were middle-class workers once again being made to pay for the mistakes of the politicians and technocrats? How could it be that barely a decade after their country supposedly saved itself from hyperinflation and despair by pegging its peso to the dollar, it found itself in desperate straits once more? Had the loans it had taken from the International Monetary Fund—and the economic sacrifices Argentines had made to get the IMF to provide the funds—been for naught? Why had IMF officials praised their country’s economic management so often over the last decade in view of the disastrous outcome? After all, the resignation of Argentine president Fernando de la Rúa and the government’s default on a record $155 billion in private-sector debt were only the most dramatic manifestations of a crisis that had long been building: four years of recession, skyrocketing interest rates, deflation, steadily rising double-digit unemployment, and, weeks before everything fell apart, the reviled freeze on the banking system. Their most important question of all—one that must be answered if the world is to avoid future Argentinas—was why had so many people seen disaster coming for so long and not done what was needed to avert it? A year later, Argentina is still mired in crisis, which is in and of itself an answer to the question: policymakers did not know how to fix the country then and they do not know how to fix it now. From the government in Buenos Aires to the international technocrats in Washington to private bankers on Wall Street, policymakers delayed acknowledging that Argentina needed to make significant changes if it was to revive its economy. As early as April 1999, U.S. Treasury officials had been warned in a memorandum that there was a very high probability that Argentina would default on its loans within three years and a virtual certainty that it would do so within five years. The IMF, which regularly examined Argentine economic data as a condition of the loans it gave, could certainly see that the country’s debt was growing while its ability to pay was shrinking. Yet it did not advise a significant change of course. The policies it did recommend would only send the country deeper into recession and make keeping up with its debt even more difficult. Argentina’s rigid exchange rate and excessive debt discouraged investment, muffling economic growth. Mounting payments on government debt were cutting off credit to the private sector. And the government’s failure to combat corruption and tax evasion was destroying its political and economic credibility. In December 2000, the IMF and the U.S. Treasury announced a nearly $40 billion aid package to support Argentina’s balance of payments but did not suggest that Argentina was suffering from anything other than a temporary shock caused by rising global interest rates. Every time Argentine officials talked about giving up the dollar-peso peg, which some critics advocated to make the country’s economy more competitive, investors showed their displeasure by selling Argentine bonds. What policies was Argentina to choose, then, if it was to be punished for changing and rewarded for doing nothing? International bankers and policymakers encouraged Argentina to keep trying to muddle through in the hope that when global economic uncertainty subsided and clear signs of global growth returned, things would magically improve. That strategy only led Argentina to borrow more, at ever-higher interest rates, like a small-time gambler indebted to a loan shark, long after it became clear that there was no way that it could keep paying its creditors. If it had been easier for Argentina to admit this much earlier, the problem would not have reached such epic proportions. In fact, Columbia University economist Charles Calomiris and a small circle of Wall Street bankers proposed in March 2001 that Argentina declare itself bankrupt, request debt forgiveness, and start over with new policies intended to reward creditors only if its economy improved. 1 But creditors balked, in no small part because there is no system for deciding how much private-sector lenders, multilateral lenders like the IMF, and governments should forgive when a country can no longer pay what it owes. In short, there is no international sovereign bankruptcy framework. 2 This is partly because politicians and many private-sector bankers have argued that a formal international bankruptcy regime would make it "too easy" for countries to default. In Argentina’s case, it was too hard for the country to acknowledge that it could no longer keep up with its obligations. Many bankers have said privately that they would have been willing to negotiate with Argentina long before it went under. Instead, it kept rolling over its short-term debt at ever-higher interest rates and digging itself in deeper. A much earlier recognition that Argentina’s debt was unsustainable could have contained the damage by forcing policy changes before the Argentine government ran out of alternatives. A year after Argentina’s default, its economy has shrunk by 16 percent as measured in pesos, and far more in dollar terms since the peso is worth less than a quarter of what it was in November 2001. Unemployment is around 25 percent, Argentines have lost three-quarters of their savings, and the banks are still in ruins. President Eduardo Duhalde has called early elections, originally for March but now postponed until April 27, there being few people willing to take on the thankless job of running the country. Worried that Argentines will come here en masse, the United States has stopped allowing them to enter the country without visas. European consulates are mobbed by Argentines who want to return to their ancestors’ homelands. Worst of all, nobody can agree on a way to help the country recover. Which Stitch
in Time Saves Nine? The consequences of failing to learn from Argentina could further dent the already battered reputations of the multilateral lenders and damage relationships between the rich nations that fund the IMF and the poor countries that borrow from it. If Latin America’s economies collapse, the Bush administration’s hard-won authority to negotiate free trade agreements will be for naught; neither the United States nor any Latin American government would be willing to sign a trade agreement under such circumstances. Rising protectionism could seriously hamper global economic growth. Many developing nations will fail to get the resources they so desperately need. A repeat of the decade-long debt crisis of the 1980s would boost emigration, decimate health and social services, and contribute to the spread of disease across international borders. Free trade or not, a bankrupt Latin America cannot buy American goods. And rising resentment against rich countries by debtor nations could make it harder to find common ground on many of these issues. For months after Argentina’s crash, Wall Street and Washington insisted that the country’s problems were mainly the fault of Argentina’s currency regime and particular political culture, and thus would not spread to other emerging-market nations the way Thailand’s 1997 devaluation crisis had. But they had to give up that mantra last summer when depositors fled banks in Uruguay and investors pulled their money out of Brazil, scaring the U.S. administration and multilateral lending institutions into advancing two hastily devised international aid packages. The debate over whether to bail out countries in trouble now hinges on whether a particular country "deserves" help—a decision that often appears related to the question of whether the country is too big or strategically important to abandon. 3 Turkey, with its teetering banking system and bloated public sector, and with inflation running at over 3 percent a month and debt at 94 percent of GDP, is an economic basket case—yet the IMF has approved $19 billion in financial aid packages for the country since 1999. Arguably, Turkey has done far less to reform its economy than Argentina. Yet it has received credits worth 15 times its IMF quota (theoretically, the largest amount to which a member nation is entitled). Would this have happened if it were not a major Western ally with a significant Muslim population and a strategic geographic location at the very edge of Europe? On the other hand, is it surprising that in 1999, when the IMF refused to support Ecuador in time to prevent it from defaulting on its obligations to Wall Street, the country in question was small and relatively insignificant? Similarly, would Argentina have been allowed to fail had Washington not convinced itself that the crisis would not spread, and that Argentina was not of strategic interest, either militarily or economically? Emerging-Market
Poster Child At the time, the multilaterals sorely needed a showcase to offset the growing criticism of their policies. Certainly, they were somewhat worried by the strident antiglobalists, who a few weeks later would turn the streets of downtown Seattle into a no-man’s-land during the World Trade Organization’s meetings. More troubling, though, was the growing contingent of American politicians who argued that IMF bailouts did not benefit recipients enough to justify their cost—and might even encourage irresponsible behavior by governments and investors. There was already talk of a report being prepared by a congressional commission headed by Carnegie Mellon finance professor Allan Meltzer and studded with other high-profile scholars and bankers. This report, released in March 2000, emphatically recommended that the IMF limit its lending to providing short-term loans to countries that were suffering from external shocks but were otherwise in good health. 4 Despite the IMF’s praise, by 1999 Argentina’s economy was showing signs of a hangover from the excesses of the Menem years. Government spending had been rising since 1995, even as revenues were falling. The government had resumed running budget deficits, which it financed by borrowing money from foreigners. It was able to do so only because huge capital inflows funded the deficits, allowed the money base to grow, and maintained the value of the peso. When those inflows decreased with the onset of the Asian economic crisis in 1997 and Russia’s default in 1998, the government kept spending anyway. This choked off credit that should have gone toward productive investments in the private sector. The economy contracted by 3.4 percent in 1999, kicking off a recession. Foreign debt rose steadily, surpassing 50 percent of GDP in 2000. When President Fernando de la Rúa took office in December 1999, he made some positive moves to balance the budget and make it easier for businesses to hire temporary workers. To reward him, the IMF in early 2000 not only renewed but increased the country’s standby credit, to $7.6 billion—conditioned on a policy package that included such fund-mandated prescriptions as tax increases that actually dampened the economy. Encouraged by the IMF money, international bankers snapped up the bonds the Argentine government sold in a borrowing spree. Even at the end of 2000, investment bank analysts argued that all Argentina needed to ensure that it could pay its debts was for the economy to resume growing by a modest 3 percent annually. International moneylenders did not stop throwing funds at Argentina until collapse was imminent—precisely when a decisive economic policy package and an infusion of cash would have helped the country bounce back quickly. Suddenly Argentina became a pariah, chastised for not having devalued the peso or dollarized sooner, and for having failed to tighten its belt earlier. No matter that during the good times of the mid-1990s, when Argentina should have reformed its spending habits, the IMF had praised its policies and investment banks had lent freely. Nor that investors, multilateral lenders, and the Argentines themselves preferred the unhappy status quo to risky attempts to change economic policy. How could a country go so quickly from poster child to pariah? Why did Argentina merit a $40 billion aid package granted with practically no discussion of how it must change its policies? These questions are particularly relevant for Brazil, which investors, fearing that its debt was about to spiral out of control, fled early last summer. Their qualms worsened as a leftist candidate, Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, seized a decisive lead in the opinion polls last fall as the first round of the presidential elections approached. Like Turkey, Brazil has relied on the IMF to skip-step from one crisis to another. Brazil’s last big international bailout was in the fall of 1998, when investors, spooked by the Asian financial crisis, pulled their money out of the country. Brazil is South America’s largest economy, and Washington was afraid that its collapse could shake financial markets around the world. Thus, the Bush administration backed the IMF-recommended $30 billion support package approved last September, even though Brazil’s circumstances are not very different from Argentina’s of a few years ago. Brazil spends 90 cents of every dollar of its foreign currency on debt service; among its other debts, there is an $8.2 billion payment due to the IMF in 2003 (though some portion of this payment is likely to be postponed). Merrill Lynch has estimated that if Brazil maintains, as promised, a budget surplus (not counting debt payments) of 3.75 percent of GDP for the next three years, if its economy grows by just under 4 percent, if the average real interest rate on government debt does not exceed 10 percent, and if the current average interest rate on the remaining debt is maintained, its debt would fall from 57 percent of GDP to an easily sustainable 44.5 percent in ten years. 5 This scenario is certainly possible—if the global economy rebounds, if investors return to emerging markets, if Brazil’s new president makes the right moves, and if there are no new global economic shocks or domestic political crises. Those are all big ifs. Interest rates in Brazil remain well above, and economic growth well below, "safe" levels. Headline
Policy Barometers Michael Mussa, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and now at the Institute for International Finance, argues that Argentina’s persistent budget deficits—even when the economy was growing in the mid-1990s—was the main avoidable reason for its catastrophic financial collapse. 6 Mussa’s thorough and cogent analysis of why the IMF failed to press aggressively for a more responsible fiscal policy illuminates the institution’s confusion: it is unable to decide whether it is a taskmaster or a benevolent uncle. As Argentina’s crisis intensified, IMF officials merely reminded the markets that convertibility had not been its idea in the first place but that it had supported it as part of its policy of encouraging stability. Mussa rightly contends that the fund erred in August 2001 by approving $7.6 billion in new support (in addition to the $14 billion it had agreed to as part of the $40 billion bailout announced the previous December) for unsustainable policies, rather than insisting on a new strategy to mitigate some of the damage from a crisis that had become unavoidable. But by then practically any package would have been a day late and a dollar short. By August 2001, the fund was "letting" Argentina decide how it was going to solve problems but essentially trying to absolve itself of blame if this last-ditch effort failed. Opening
Up The IMF’s resistance to public give-and-take is a large part of the reason that governments of debtor countries often have a hard time convincing their citizens to accept its prescriptions, which often involve a good deal of pain. The IMF should take public opinion into account when it comes to such issues as increasing tax revenues, trade policy and rich-country protectionism, political accountability, how to spend extraordinary revenues and pay for one-time expenses, and how to reduce bureaucratic obstacles and provide broad credit access for the middle class and small and medium-sized businesses. To take just one issue, the fund’s recommendations focus on easily collected taxes, like the value-added tax, which tend to burden the lower and middle classes disproportionately and often dampen consumption and thus slow economic growth; it might do better to help governments figure out how to collect taxes from wealthy tax evaders. It has promoted privatization to make it harder for governments to hand out jobs as political favors or raid companies’ cash boxes, and in principle to make businesses more efficient, but in many cases it has allowed governments to use the "wind-fall" revenue from privatization to pad current budgets instead of paying off debt or creating reserve funds against future crises. Only in rare cases has the IMF shown itself to be more flexible about the policies it requires. In Ecuador in 2001, for example, it backed away from insisting on an extremely unpopular value-added tax increase as long as the government found a way to replace the lost revenues. But often, as in Argentina, it does nothing to counteract the appearance that it is simply spouting rhetoric about "countries owning their own policies" as a way to sidestep its responsibility when its policies prove counterproductive. By continuing to lend to Argentina with-out pushing the government to rein in its boom-time borrowing, improve its tax-collection record, or attack corruption, and by pushing policies that were deeply unpopular, like tax increases during a recession, the IMF became responsible for the country’s failure as well. International
Chapter 11 Who could blame Wall Street bankers for enjoying—despite their own losses—a moment of schadenfreude at the misfortune of an institution whose "senior" creditor status has been a major sticking point in the relationship between the multilaterals and Wall Street? The IMF expects full repayment (eventually) from creditor nations, while it routinely insists that private investors forgive substantial amounts of what they are owed when countries get into trouble. To add insult to injury, when a financial crisis occurs, the IMF and the U.S. government often accuse bondholders of having invested irresponsibly—even though the IMF itself had deemed the country in question creditworthy. The IMF’s expectations of full repayment are particularly irritating to Wall Street because of the fund’s special role in prescribing and giving its stamp of approval to economic policies. This has complicated IMF-led efforts to set up a sorely needed international bankruptcy regime. In November 2001, as Argentina’s default appeared imminent, IMF deputy managing director Anne Krueger sagely proposed the creation of such a regime. Private-sector bankers bristled at the idea that the IMF could even mention the possibility of overseeing an international bankruptcy tribunal because its status as a large lender presents serious conflict-of-interest issues. Last April, Krueger proposed a framework that would give "bankrupt" nations protection from legal action for a period of time after the suspension of payments and during negotiations with creditors; assurances that creditors’ interests were being protected during the stay; and a guarantee that the borrower would not request forgiveness on any fresh financing from private creditors after the stay. These are sensible proposals, but putting them into effect will be difficult. Krueger suggested amending the IMF’s articles of agreement (requiring acceptance by three-fifths of its members, with 85 percent of votes in favor) to create a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism. However, she noted, "while an amendment to the Fund’s Articles would be used as the tool to give the mechanism legal force, it would not entail a significant transfer of legal authority to the institution.... [T]he essential decision-making power would be vested in the debtor and a super-majority of its creditors— not the Fund." 7 Siding with Wall Street in its reluctance to give the IMF additional power, Undersecretary of the Treasury John Taylor called Krueger’s proposals an "academic" exercise. He advocated instead the use of collective action clauses—that is, enhanced contracts between countries and their creditors that would allow a super-majority of creditors to bind minority creditors to the terms of a restructuring. Days later, his new deputy backtracked on Taylor’s behalf in an apparent effort to calm the debate, saying that the Treasury supported the IMF’s efforts to find a solution to the problem. But this appeared to be lip service, since it is likely to be at least a year, or more, before the IMF’s bureaucracy moves on Krueger’s proposal. By then, the incremental approaches to debt restructuring, as advocated by the U.S. Treasury and the private sector, will likely be in force, ready to be tested the next time a crisis rolls around. Understandably wary of allowing the IMF to cement the status quo—under which private investors usually have to forgive as much as 45 percent of the principal they have lent (in the Argentine case, they could be asked to write off as much as 80 percent— bondholders want the restructuring process to remain informal. In June, six private-sector financial trade organizations— the Emerging Markets Creditors Association, EMTA (formerly the Emerging Markets Traders Association), the Institute of International Finance, the International Primary Market Association, the Securities Industry Association, and the Bond Market Association— sent a letter to the G-7 finance ministers and central bank governors setting out their emerging-market crisis management recommendations. These "market-based" solutions (bankers’ euphemism for "not the IMF") include greater use of collective action clauses in sovereign debt contracts, the possible inclusion of stronger covenants in individual bond contracts to limit debt and prevent payment to one creditor without equal treatment of the others, and the convening of informal private-sector advisory groups to represent holders of various bonds. 8 In line with Krueger’s advocacy of creditor protection similar to that under the U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy law, the private-creditor proposal concedes, "There may be circumstances when a rollover of debt maturities or a temporary cessation of payments (without a suspension of enforcement rights) may become useful for moving toward a resolution of a particular crisis." 9 Note, however, its reference to the sanctity of "enforcement rights." This alludes to efforts to prevent rogue creditors—investors who buy distressed debt for a fraction of face value, then sue to claim full repayment even when other bondholders have voted to forgive some of the outstanding debt. Investors have mixed feelings of envy coupled with resentment toward these rogues, who can make it harder for all bondholders to reach an agreement that would allow a country to resume payments. Yet, because the private sector has so often been forced to reduce its claims or take nothing while multilateral lenders expect full repayment, it is unwilling to accept any suggestion that its rights be reduced, even when it may be in its best interest to do so. Some private investors have taken the issue to their own nations’ courts. Last summer, Italian investors won a judgment freezing Argentine assets in Italy and, significantly, rerouting Italian government payments intended for the IMF to private investors instead. Even if this decision does not hold up, it is likely to be only one of many assaults that multilateral lenders can expect in the wake of Argentina’s collapse. German bondholders have already followed suit. Depending on the outcomes of such cases, and on how many countries see lawsuits like these, it may be that a stronger legal framework will be needed to prevent investors in countries with friendly legal systems from squeezing more than their share from bankrupt nations. It is unlikely, however, that investors would accept the IMF as arbiter, even if the fund were to back away from bailouts and its insistence that it be repaid first and in full. Where Are
We Now? The United States wants international financial institutions to reform their lending policies. But U.S. officials have been erratic at best in formulating, stating, and implementing policies toward struggling nations, and were long on criticism and short on constructive input even before the war on terrorism, which has distracted the Bush administration. As for the problem of Argentina, in neither Buenos Aires nor Washington is there a consensus on how to turn things around. What is clear, however, is that with its obligations at more than 150 percent of GDP, Argentina cannot attract more investment unless it dramatically reduces its debt load. Allan Meltzer has proposed that the IMF offer to help Argentina settle its debt to foreign investors—about $45 billion at face value, or $9 billion at market prices. He suggests that Argentina offer to redeem the debt at 20 cents on the dollar in exchange for new bonds, and that the IMF offer to pay 15 cents on the dollar to investors who prefer cash. 10 This would reduce the country’s debt burden and make the new bonds tradable again. Though Meltzer does not say so explicitly, such a move would also send a signal that the IMF recognizes that it, too, needs a dramatic new approach to the way it does business. Widespread criticism of the IMF has compounded the institution’s unwillingness to admit mistakes and reform its lending practices. Despite its rhetoric that it is becoming more transparent, the institution needs to do more to solicit public input into the formulation of its policies. In 2001, the fund created the Office for Independent Evaluation, a supervisory body whose role is analogous to the GAO’s with respect to Congress. This is a start. Though the office’s reports are posted on the fund’s website, there is as of yet little evidence that they have prompted any reforms—or even much discussion of reform. An important safeguard would be to establish a review procedure that would be triggered by warning signals (like rising debt-to-GDP ratios, sharp changes in the balance of payments, and so on) and carried out by teams of examiners independent of the IMF and including a range of outside perspectives from diverse sectors of lender and borrower nations. These could include representatives of the public and private sectors, business and labor, lender and non-lender governments. The IMF also needs to consider ways to encourage private-sector capital flows to debtor nations when markets otherwise are closed because of particular economic shocks. Anne Krueger’s proposal to protect "new money" from further restructurings is a good start toward this end. Increasing private capital flows is the only way to limit the need for multilateral funds. To their credit, the multilaterals did reduce their share of lending during the emerging-market boom in the 1990s. But at times of crisis, market sources of capital become prohibitively expensive. The IMF has dealt with this by providing large bailouts which, typically, only help investors get their money out of failing countries at better prices. They are especially reluctant to leave their investments in place because they know that when total collapse comes, the IMF will be at the front of the line asking to be repaid. Financial engineering has become sophisticated enough that the IMF should consider dedicating some portion of its lending to projects in which its interests are aligned with those of citizens of debtor nations and private-sector creditors. That is, it should not be demanding to be repaid immediately if by doing so it forces citizens into soup kitchens and private creditors to refuse to lend except at astronomical interest rates. It could, for example, still require countries to pay obligations coming due, but channel that money into, say, guarantees for loans to the private sector to keep trade credit lines active or to stimulate investment. Or it could expand its loan guarantees for private-sector lending to governments as a way to lower the cost of funds to debtor countries and keep markets open during turbulent times; such guarantees have helped countries, including Argentina and Colombia, fund themselves during crises but are a political hot potato now that Argentina has defaulted on a World Bank guaranteed bond. 11 The fund could tie interest rates and repayment schedules to economic performance in debtor countries; if the country grew fast, the IMF would get more, and vice versa. The lessons to be learned from Argentina’s demise are clear. The international financial community needs ways to respond faster when countries are on the verge of insolvency, most importantly a combination of warning signals and an international bankruptcy mechanism that combined could halt the accumulation of mountains of debt and limit the damage when countries default. The IMF must be less dogmatic and more pragmatic in the policy menus it offers, and take responsibility—moral and financial— when those policies fail. Borrower governments and international lenders must listen to public opinion when developing economic policy, build consensus support, and hold accountable all parties who are responsible when things go awry. • *Michele Wucker is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, specializing in immigration and Latin American finance and politics. Notes 1. Circulated informally at first, these ideas were fully elaborated in Charles W. Calomiris, "How to Resolve the Argentine Debt Crisis" (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, April 6, 2001). Available at www.aei.org/ps/pscalomiris.htm. 2. See Michele Wucker, "Passing the Buck: No Chapter 11 for Bankrupt Nations," World Policy Journal, vol. 18 (summer 2001). 3. In many cases, governments postpone difficult economic decisions because they need precious political capital to win legislative support on issues that are vital to geopolitical (read: U.S.) interests. Under such circumstances, at least a portion of international financial assistance should come in the form of grants or debt reduction—not as loans that will come back to haunt a country once American interests have been met. The Bush administration has proposed such an approach, as has financier George Soros, but the idea has stalled over the question of whether governments would actually pony up for such projects. 4. Available at www.house.gov/jec/imf/meltzer.pdf. Though the report was not released until early 2000, the broad ideas contained within it were no secret and were certainly relevant in the second half of 1999. The Meltzer Commission was mandated as a condition of the latest U.S. disbursement to the IMF. 5. Miguel Palomino and Merrill Lynch Economics/ Strategy Team, Debt Dynamics 101: Is Brazil’s Debt Sustainable (New York: Merrill Lynch, August 9, 2002). 6. Michael Mussa, Argentina and the Fund: From Triumph to Tragedy, Policy Analyses in International Economics 67 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Finance, July 2002). Originally presented as a paper at the spring 2002 IMF meetings. 7. Anne Krueger, "New Approaches to Sovereign Debt Restructuring: An Update on Our Thinking," paper presented at the Institute for International Economics conference, "Sovereign Debt Workouts: Hopes and Hazards," Washington, D.C., April 1, 2002. Available at www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2002/040102.htm. 8. Contractual approaches to "sovereign bankruptcy" are elaborated more fully in Lee Buchheit and Mitu Gulati, "Sovereign Bonds and the Collective Will," Georgetown-Sloan Project on Business Institutions working paper no. 34 (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Law Center, March 2002); and in Adam Lerrick and Allan H. Meltzer, "Beyond IMF Bailouts: Default without Disruption," Quarterly International Economics Report, Gailliot Center for Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, May 2001. 9. Institute for International Finance. "Financial Industry Leaders Announce Consensus on Crisis Management and Sovereign Debt Restructuring." Available at www.iif.com/news/story.quagga?id=198&ref=home. 10. "Argentina 2002," prepared for the Cato Institute’s Twentieth Annual Monetary Conference, cosponsored by The Economist, New York, October 17, 2002. 11. Matthieu Wirz, "No Guarantees," International Financing Review, October 19, 2002; see also Gabriel De Santis, "Questionable Status," International Financing Review, November 30, 2002. [Go to interactive discussion forum]
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