Thursday 03 March 2016
6:30pm - 8pm
Phd Academy - LSE Library
The 15 years old ‘Argentine Debt Saga’ - as the Financial Times has come to call Argentina's negotiations with its 'hold-out creditors' who refused to restructure Argentine debt after the 2001 default - has become an emblem for the problems associated with a ‘gaping hole’ in international finance: the lack of a mechanism to govern sovereign debt restructuring. While the end of the negotiations between the newly elected Argentine government and the holdout-creditors in New York is still open, the time has come to ask probing questions not only about possible solutions to Argentina’s current predicament, but also about the larger institutional changes required to avoid such situations to emerge in the future. What are the prospects for the United Nations recent principles for sovereign debt restructuring? And how would a more radical solution to the problems associated with sovereign debt lending in a post-Bretton Woods world look like? What are the social purposes and obligations of sovereign lending? How do these reflections illuminate Greece’s current predicament and the country’s own tango with norms of debt repayment and social justice?