Argentine President-elect Mauricio Macri plans to push through economic reforms that will buy him time for a "tough negotiation" with U.S. hedge funds suing the country over unpaid government debt, Bloomberg News reported. The pro-business Macri, who narrowly won Sunday's presidential election, vows to get the stalled economy moving again but needs to settle a decade-long legal battle with the holdout creditors before he can return to global credit markets.

On a cruise round the Mediterranean, Domingo Cavallo, Argentina’s economy minister in the run-up to the country’s dramatic economic collapse in 2001, was bemused when he was unable to use his credit card during a brief stop-off on Greek soil last week, the Financial Times reported.

Argentina’s thirst for dollars has been temporarily quenched by a $1.4bn bond sale but a state visit to Russia this week is unlikely to yield significant support for its languishing economy, the Financial Times reported. Hindered from issuing debt in international capital markets by a long-running dispute with a group of holdout hedge funds, Argentina succeeded in issuing dollar-denominated debt under local law on Tuesday to bolster precariously low foreign exchange reserves.

The legal feud between Argentina and a group of “holdout” creditors is inflicting collateral damage on a growing number of victims caught in the crossfire. One of the few winners from the fight might turn out to be Cristina Fernández, the country’s president, the Financial Times reported. As Argentina continues to defy US court orders to pay the holdouts after its 2001 debt default, its citizens are suffering the broader fallout of a struggling economy. Bondholders remain unpaid since the government defaulted again last year.

The nasty battle between Argentina and a group of New York hedge funds has claimed another victim: Citigroup. The bank said on Tuesday that it would shut its custody business in Argentina after a federal judge in New York last week rejected its request to lift an order that prevented the bank from making interest payments to investors holding $2.3 billion in Argentine notes, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported.

Debt-holders who want to jumpstart restructuring talks with Argentina may have to wait until a court rules next month on whether to let a disputed bond payment go through, further extending a legal feud that has hobbled state finances, Business Insider reported. The case stems from Argentina's 2002 default on about $100 billion, which has weighed on Latin America's No. 3 economy by locking it out of the global bond market at a time of stagnant growth and high inflation.

US holders of defaulted Argentine bonds have stepped up their campaign for full repayment of their loans by detailing how 14 senior Argentine officials experienced “dramatic and often unexplained increases” in their personal wealth during service in the Kirchner administrations, the Irish Times reported.

The hopes of easing a debt dispute between Argentina and a group of New York hedge funds seemed to be dashed on Monday after the country’s economy minister made an offer that appeared to fall well short of what the investors were seeking, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. Argentina made the informal offer after a potentially onerous legal clause in its bonds ceased to apply on Dec. 31. The hedge funds, known as holdouts, had sued Argentina in the United States to get full payments on bonds that the country defaulted on in 2001.

The Argentine government and a holdout group of bond creditors led by billionaire Paul Singer will soon have a chance to renegotiate a longstanding debt dispute that U.S. courts and the United Nations have wrestled with and that ultimately could affect debt restructuring worldwide, The New Zealand Herald reported on an AP story. The so-called Rights Upon Future Offers clause, built into renegotiated debt exchanges in 2005 and 2010, expires at midnight Wednesday. The clause obligated Argentina to provide older creditors the same terms it gave creditors in any new negotiations.

From the days when monarchs over-borrowed for their mercantile adventures, to Argentina’s recent failure to pay its creditors, countries have long run into trouble paying back what they have borrowed. Spain’s 16th-century king, Philip II, reigned over four of his country’s defaults. Greece and Argentina have reneged on their commitments to bondholders seven and eight times respectively over the past 200 years. And most countries have defaulted at least once in their history. But what precisely happens when countries stop paying what they owe?