Hi!

Im newsletter von stratfor.com ist heute ein Bericht über Argentiniens Verschuldung zu lesen. Die Metapher"mushrooming financial crisis" lässt das Bild vor meinen Augen entstehen: Knollenblätterpilze mit der Aufschrift <font color="CC0000">öffentliche Schulden 143 Mrd.$</font> (davon 70% in US-$) und <font color="CC0000">Schulden im privaten Bereich 61 Mrd.$.</font>

Hier der Artikel:

Argentina: Deflating Washington’s Free
Trade Hopes
24 April 2001


While in Quebec City, U.S. President George W. Bush said he will make the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) his top foreign policy priority in Latin America. But hard on the heels of the summit, Argentina’s mushrooming financial crisis will bump hemispheric trade expansion off the top of the administration’s agenda.

Argentina’s main financial problem is not the peso’s convertibility to the U.S. dollar, but rather the country’s inability to pay off its debt. Argentina simply is not earning enough hard currency to pay down its public and private sector foreign debt.

Argentina has a consolidated public sector debt of $143 billion. Almost 70 percent of the debt is denominated in U.S. dollars. Private sector debt totals about $61 billion. Public and private sector foreign debt together total about $204 billion. The public sector alone needs to come up with about $20 billion a year to meet its debt service commitments.

Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo insists he can lift Argentina out of its 33-month recession without devaluing the peso or defaulting. He has floated a plan to rescue the economy by increasing competitiveness and pegging the peso to a dollar/euro basket, which will be implemented when the euro reaches parity with the dollar.

Cavallo claims his proposals already are stimulating growth, but global financial markets are skeptical. His peso proposal caused increased uncertainty in international markets, which had already assigned Argentina the staggeringly high-risk premium of 1,142 basis points April 23. Apparently aware of the looming abyss, on April 23 the Argentine government suspended the planned auction of $350 million in Treasury bills and between $200 million and $400 million in Treasury bonds amid fears the markets would charge exorbitant interest rates.

Cavallo clearly does not have all the answers. He recently admitted the peso was overvalued by about 20 percent - but insists devaluation will not occur on his watch. Critics of the convertibility system Cavallo created a decade ago as economy minister under President Carlos Menem claim the peso’s rigidly fixed one-to-one exchange rate with the U.S. dollar has perpetuated high domestic prices and wages, undercutting the competitiveness of Argentine commodities and industrial exports as the dollar has strengthened against other currencies. Yet, Cavallo has rejected adopting the U.S. dollar as Argentina’s national currency.

Instead, he claims the adoption of a dollar/euro currency basket will make the peso more stable and competitive against the dollar. But many financial analysts see the proposal as a disguised devaluation, noting that the euro was at 89 cents to the dollar last week and may not reach parity for months or years. Other analysts puzzle over how tying the peso to both the dollar and the euro would solve Argentina’s financial dilemma: how to earn enough hard currency to pay its foreign debts.

Cavallo will go to the International Monetary Fund before defaulting or devaluing. The IMF desperately wants to prevent both a default and a devaluation of the peso, fearing the regional and global consequences of a financial meltdown. But even another IMF bailout like the $40 billion aid package assembled last December will not solve the country’s fast-approaching debt payment crisis. At most, a bailout will postpone the inevitable moment when Buenos Aires declares a default and seeks new restructuring talks with international creditors.

There are regional implications, too. Brazil is getting hammered. As Argentina’s financial crisis has ballooned this year, Brazil’s real has come under increasing pressure, depreciating more than 15 percent since January.

Last week the Bovespa, Brazil’s leading stock market index, fell 8.52 percent - plunging almost 5.09 percent immediately after Cavallo declared he favored loosening Argentina’s ties to the South American Common Market (Mercosur) in favor of a stronger bilateral relationship with the United States.

When Argentina finally defaults, U.S. President George W. Bush will have little choice but to push trade expansion aside and focus on debt restructuring negotiations in which Argentina's creditors may have to write off between 25 percent and 30 percent of what they are owed. If Bush fails to engage the U.S. government quickly in solving Argentina's financial meltdown, the crisis will spread regionally and almost certainly will wreck plans to expand hemispheric trade in Latin America.

schöne Grüsse
Cosa


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