Cavallo pawns an uncertain future
Unless the economy rapidly returns to growth, a huge bond swap will have merely postponed a debt default
“WE HAVE dealt with the urgent thing so we can dedicate ourselves to the important thing,” declared Domingo Cavallo, Argentina's economy minister, last weekend, on concluding the biggest-ever voluntary refinancing of its debts by a government. This involved exchanging some $29.5 billion in mainly short-term debt for newly issued bonds which expire after 2005.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Cavallo pawns an uncertain future”
From the June 9th 2001 edition
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