Restructuring debt is top priority
Litigation risk for years to come
NOT FOR THE first time, sovereign debt restructuring is likely to dominate the IMF/World Bank annual meetings. Most of the discussion this year will concentrate on Argentina: what the country should do, what the IMF should do, whether the debt exchange is going to be a success.
In the background, making far fewer headlines, will be negotiations on $100 billion of another country's debt. Representatives from all the big creditors will be trying hard to reach a solution and there's a good chance that progress will be made.
After all the emphasis on collective action problems and bond restructurings, the official sector has a tough nut of its own to crack. If a small group of countries can't agree on restructuring sovereign debt, they should think twice about lecturing a much larger group of bondholders on doing the...
