Argentina and the Financial Globalization: Foreign Debt and the Relations with Multilateral Institutions

BRENTA, NOEMÍ

Pekin

Simposio; Tsinghua University Doctoral Program in Developing Country Studies; 2016

Tsinghua University Doctoral Program in Developing Country Studies

The full scale arrival of Argentina tothe great financial globalization began with the regularization of its sovereigndebt, contracted during the decades 1970s and 1980s.  By way of the Brady Plan, in 1993, Argentina restructuredits external liabilities with commercial banks, converting them into negotiablebonds with high liquidity and returns, which were partially exchangeable forpublic assets in the process of privatization, and that spread the risk outamong a lot of investors.  Thismechanism, announced by the U.S. Secretary of Treasury Nicholas Brady in Marchof 1989, healed the balances sheets of the creditor banks, reprogrammed debtmaturity of 17 countries in terms of up to 30 years, and shaped a marketsubstantially bigger than the majority of financial places.