Argentina wants to repay 25 cents per dollar of debt

[Judi Lynn]

Argentina wants to repay 25 cents per dollar of debt

AP
Thursday, January 13, 2005



BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) - Three years after declaring the biggest default by a sovereign nation, Argentina launched a marketing blitz yesterday urging investors to accept new terms for restructuring US$103 billion (euro78.4 billion) in debt.

Days ahead of its formal debt offer, Argentina's government is proposing to pay, in some cases, as little as 25 cents on every dollar borrowed in a groundbreaking restructuring that many analysts say is likely to succeed.

Opening a global campaign aimed at winning over bondholders, Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna unveiled the country's final offer, which is to be formally rolled out to investors worldwide on tomorrow.

The restructuring - considered the most complex and largest of its kind - will see Argentina issue between US$38.5 billion (euro29.3 billion) and US$41.8 billion (euro31.81 billion) in new restructured debt with lower interest rates and longer maturities.

But the proposed deal has met resistance from some foreign bondholders angry over the deep losses they are being asked to assume.
(snip/...)

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magazines/Business/html/20050112T210000-0500_73106_OBS_ARGENTINA_WANTS_TO_REPAY____CENTS_PER_DOLLAR_OF_DEBT.asp

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Argentina: Corruption Timeline

May 1989 – Carlos Menem of the Justicialist Party (PJ—Partido Justicialista, also known as the Peronist Party) is elected president, soundly defeating Eduardo Angeloz of the Radical Party (UCR—Unión Cívica Radical) by a margin of 47 percent to 37 percent. Uncertainty concerning the transition sends the Argentine currency plummeting and causes inflation and interest rates to soar.

December 1990 – Menem grants a blanket amnesty to military officers and leftist insurgents involved in Argentina's "dirty war" of 1976 to 1983, freeing convicted criminals from prison and preventing prosecution of anyone else for their illicit activities. In coming years, Menem urges former military officers to "not rub salt in old wounds" by discussing the atrocities of the so-called dirty war.

January 1991 – Following a public complaint by the U.S. Embassy that an unnamed official had demanded a bribe from an American company, Menem purges a number of ministers and aides, including half of his cabinet. Página 12 eventually publishes a story alleging that Menem's brother-in-law had demanded the bribe.

April 1991 – Página 12 breaks a story describing an investigation in Spain that Menem's sister-in-law, who works as his appointments secretary, was under investigation for laundering drug money.
(snip)

October 1998 – Marcelo Cattáneo, the brother of a former Menem aide who is a key witness in a bribery scandal, is found hanging from a rope in an abandoned shack in Buenos Aires. Though the death is ruled a suicide by police and a judge soon closes an investigation into the matter, doubts surface as investigators leak more details to the public. Among the revelations is the fact that a newspaper clipping concerning the scandal had been found in his mouth. The scandal, under investigation in multiple countries, involved alleged bribes totaling US$21 million from IBM to state-run Banco de la Nación in order to obtain a US$250 million contract from the Argentine government.
(snip)

October 2001 – Swiss authorities freeze two accounts linked to Menem pending an investigation into money laundering. One account, opened in the name of his former wife and daughter during the mid-1980s, before Menem was president, holds about US$600,000. A second account, controlled by Menem's former personal secretary and opened while Menem was president, is said to hold about US$6 million.
(snip/...)

http://www.publicintegrity.org/ga/country.aspx?cc=ar&act=timeline

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Bush Friend Arrested for Illegal Arms Trafficking
by Ana Simo

JUNE 7, 2001. A long-time friend of former U.S. President George H. Bush was arrested today on charges of illegal arms trafficking. If found guilty, he could face a jail term of up to ten years. Only a phone call from the new Bush White House might spare him the indignity, he thinks. But the phones aren't ringing.

The friend in trouble is the former President of Argentina, Carlos Menem, a golfing partner and business benefactor of the elder Bush. He is suspected of having illegally sold 6,500 tons of arms to Croatia and Ecuador between 1991 and 1995, in violation of international arms embargoes. Menem, who was put under house arrest today by a Buenos Aires federal judge, said in his defense last weekend that the U.S. knew all about the arms sales.
(snip)

In 1988, a few months before Menem was elected for his first term, George W. Bush, the then oilman son of a sitting U.S. President, had tried to pressure the administration of outgoing President Raúl Alfonsín to favor Enron, the Houston-based company, over other, more qualified bidders to build a gas pipeline in Argentina. He was unsuccessful, but the Bushes hit it off with the high-rolling, big-spending Menem from the start. One of Menem's first acts as President was to give Enron a $300-million sweetheart deal on the pipeline project.
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/SIM202A.html

[w4rma]

1. This is what the US is going to do in the future, at this rate.

And I'd support it.

[happyslug]

2. The US does not have to.....

All the US needs to do is permit the Dollar to drop in real terms. Remember Argentina is like the rest of the Third World, it has borrowed money NOT dominated in it its own currency but Dollars (and increases in terms of its own Currency).

Thus if a Third World Country's Currency drops in real terms, its debts stays in the same in Dollar terms (and thus the debt INCREASES in the country's own currency). This forces countries like Argentina to offer 25 cents on the Dollar when its currency goes bad, while the US can just leave the Dollar go down (even to Zero Value) and still pay in Dollars (even if the Dollar is worthless).

[Kagemusha]

4. Or it could renig on the bonds in the Social Security Lock Box.

See how easy it is? That's why you need SS reform, see. Make sure the government never has to pay what it's promised. Payroll taxes were supposed to be a free piggy bank, not a drain.

International finance never seemed so simple. Just add a bit of understanding of fraud and it's easy.

[rucky]

3. The Bushies never met a dictator they didn't like.

to quote Randi Rhodes.