Argentina’s creditors holding out hope that they can avoid losses on the country’s bonds are “living in fantasy land”, one big investor said, reflecting tensions over the government’s reorganisation of its massive debt pile, the Financial Times reported. Alberto Fernández, who is expected to win presidential elections later this month, has assured markets that losses on bonds would not be necessary as part of the debt’s “voluntary reprofiling”, as long as creditors give Argentina’s economy time to start growing again.

Argentina’s presidential front-runner Alberto Fernandez said that if elected next month, he would aim to avoid haircuts on bond payments and seek a moderate “Uruguay-style” debt restructuring, music to the ears of the country’s creditors, Reuters reported. Investors are closely watching Fernandez’s comments on debt after the South American nation was forced to announce plans to renegotiate around $100 billion in bonds after a sharp market crash in August pushed the country toward default.

British emerging markets investor Ashmore Group is betting that Argentina’s current crisis, that has seen the country veer toward default, is not as bad as it looks, Reuters reported. The investment manager is buying Argentina’s dollar bonds in the belief the clear favorite to win next month’s general election, Alberto Fernandez, will be less radical in overhauling the government’s debt than markets now expect, one of its executives said on Wednesday.

Argentina’s financial program with the International Monetary Fund will be on hold for some time as the nation grapples with severe political and economic uncertainty, the Fund’s Acting Managing Director David Lipton said an interview, Bloomberg News reported. “Our job in this setting is to help them get through this period, give them advice, work toward an eventual resumption of a relationship -- some kind of financial relationship with them -- which may have to wait awhile,” Lipton told Bloomberg Radio on Wednesday.

Argentina’s government can’t resolve growing investor concern over the ability to repay its debt alone and will require consensus with the opposition to reach an orderly reprofiling of its obligations, Economy Minister Hernan Lacunza said, Bloomberg News reported. With just a month before general elections and the handover for the next administration slated for Dec.

The International Monetary Fund has a tough choice to make in Argentina: Unlock over $5 billion in funds under the country’s loan deal as the government strains to stave off default, or hold the money back and risk sparking more market panic, Reuters reported. The IMF, which agreed a $57 billion line of credit with the South American nation last year, needs to make a decision on releasing the latest tranche of those funds. The disbursement was originally set to be made this month.

Argentina is, by nearly all accounts, catapulting toward default after running up more than $100 billion of debt. Some say it’s just months away. Others say it’s actually already happened on a small portion of bonds, Bloomberg News reported. For even the casual observer, the whole thing has a certain feeling of deja vu. The South American nation is a defaulting machine with few peers in the world. The first episode came in 1827, just 11 years after independence. The most recent one came in 2014.

Fund managers recently burned by Argentina are doubling down on the country’s bonds, saying that prices have dropped to levels that should offer solid returns, the Financial Times reported. Many investors endured big marked-to-market losses in the wake of August’s primary election, which paved the way for a return of a Peronist government. Stocks and bonds plunged, while the peso dropped lost more than one-fifth of its value against the US dollar.

Argentina was not invited to the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 that created the IMF, and it did not join until 1956, The Economist reported. But it has been making its presence felt ever since. At the end of August a team from the IMF visited Buenos Aires to assess the lie of the land before deciding whether to give Argentina’s government, led by Mauricio Macri, any more of the record $57bn loan (worth over 10% of Argentina’s 2018 GDP) agreed last year. But as the team left town, the landscape shifted.

A $15 billion pile of provincial bonds is lurking below the surface of Argentina’s already imposing sovereign debt load, setting the latest fiscal fiasco apart from any in the country’s history and threatening to saddle foreign investors with even more losses, Bloomberg News reported. The nation’s provinces were among the most prolific issuers when international capital markets reopened to Argentina following business-friendly President Mauricio Macri’s election in 2015.