The Brazilian government projects the cancellation of nearly 900 million dollars in debt owed by a dozen African countries as a gesture of solidarity. But others simply see an aim to expand the economic and political influence of South America’s powerhouse.
As a sign of Argentina’s willingness to repay its bondholders, President Cristina Fernández introduced a bill for a new swap of the foreign debt held by “holdout” creditors who refused earlier restructurings after the country’s late 2001 default.
A recent U.S. court ruling over a fight between Argentina and its creditors on Wall Street will increase global poverty by making it easier for "vulture funds" to seize the assets of indebted nations, according to anti-debt campaigners who are urging the U.S. government to overturn the decision.
The Caribbean is in danger of becoming “a region of serial defaulters” with respect to international debt obligations, according to one expert, and this may partly be due to its economies suffering frequent shocks from natural disasters.
Vulture capitalist Paul Singer has hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in his legal battle with Argentina over the country's 2001 debt default.
When Argentina defaulted on its national debt in 2001, U.S. hedge funds swooped in to buy the nation's bonds at pennies on the dollar, confident they would eventually prevail in the U.S. legal system and force the country to pay out in full.
The fate of countries with major debt problems is at stake in federal courts in New York, which are to decide in April whether or not they accept Argentina’s proposal to the bondholders who rejected two restructurings of sovereign debt.
Nearly 20 of the world’s largest creditor countries have announced that they would be cutting nearly half of Myanmar’s total foreign debt, worth some six billion dollars.
As reports surfaced Tuesday that U.S. negotiators, in Cairo for the past week, are closing in on an agreement to cut a billion dollars from Egypt’s bilateral debt, the State Department here announced that a record-sized U.S. business delegation would travel to Egypt later this week.
Twelve years after a global campaign successfully advocated the cancellation of some of the world’s poorest countries’ public debt, developing economies are again facing unsustainable debt burdens. Only this time, it is the private sector’s debt in developing economies that is inflating dangerously.