Argentina

Argentina, looking to skirt a U.S. court ruling forcing it to pay holders of defaulted debt, will seek investor backing for a plan to move the rest of its international bonds into the local market, Economy Minister Axel Kicillof said, Bloomberg News reported. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s administration has studied “extensively” the process to shift bondholders into the domestic market via a debt exchange and will meet with lawmakers to discuss the plans tomorrow, Kicillof told reporters today in Buenos Aires. At the same time, Argentina will send its lawyers to speak with U.S.

The U.S. Supreme Court handed Argentina a major setback in its long-running battle with a small group of determined creditors, heightening the risk the country will default for the second time in 13 years, The Wall Street Journal reported. The justices on Monday rejected Argentina's appeal of a lower-court ruling that said the country can't make bond payments until it compensates hedge funds that refused to accept restructured debt in the years following Argentina's 2001 default.

Argentina has reached a landmark deal with the Paris Club of creditor nations to pay a longstanding $9.7bn debt in its latest move to win back confidence from international capital markets, the Financial Times reported. After marathon negotiations in Paris, ending after midnight on Wednesday, Argentina agreed to pay the debt that remained from its 2001 default over five to seven years. The government will pay $650m in July, and a further $500m by May 2015. The deal marks an important step in Argentina’s efforts to attract foreign investment.

Argentina's government stressed on Tuesday that it will continue to service restructured debt regardless of the outcome of its legal fight with bondholders who refused to accept its debt-restructuring offers, Reuters reported. The government laid out its position in a statement ahead of filing its latest court papers in the U.S. Supreme Court in the high-profile litigation. The nine justices are set to consider whether to hear Argentina's appeal on June 12.

Argentina’s biggest unions paralyzed metro, train and bus services today and blocked the main entrances into the capital to protest rising prices and crime, Bloomberg News reported. Trash started to pile up in downtown Buenos Aires as garbage collection was suspended and union members blocked Corrientes, one of the main thoroughfares with a sign that read “enough economic adjustments,” a reference to a 19 percent devaluation in January and a sharp increase in interest rates.

Argentina has added more than 100 consumer products to a controversial price control program as the government grapples with one of the highest rates of inflation in the world, The Wall Street Journal reported. Inflation is widely thought to be more than 30% following the devaluation of the Argentine peso in January and the government's habit of financing deficits through money printing. Instead of making unpopular spending cuts to tame inflation, President Cristina Kirchner has capped prices on almost 200 basic consumer goods and almost doubled benchmark interest rates.

Argentina has been approached by financial institutions offering it loans at favorable rates, the economy ministry said on Sunday, marking a tentative reopening of international credit markets for the first time in over a decade, Reuters reported. The economy ministry issued a statement on Sunday, saying it had received offers of credit from abroad. It did not name the institutions. "In recent weeks ...

Funeral home director Carlos Bianchi's dilemma over how much to charge for his coffins goes a long way in illustrating the economic woes plaguing both Argentina and Venezuela, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Argentine government's currency devaluation last month, which helped spur a global selloff in emerging-market currencies, also sent prices soaring here. What confounds Mr. Bianchi's calculation is that he must use an unsteady and weakening currency, the peso, to buy imported parts for his wares.

Jorge Contrera checked a pair of soiled shoes from top to bottom, tried to buff them with his shirt sleeve, then paid 40 pesos ($5) for his 8-year-old daughter’s present. Before Argentina’s devaluation last month, he planned to surprise her with a new pair. “Do you know how I feel buying my daughter used shoes?” said 29-year-old Contrera, a welder who’s currently working as a delivery man.

Argentina's government allowed its beleaguered peso to slide farther against the U.S. currency on Friday, saying it would ease limits on the purchase of dollars to stem a possible currency crisis like the one that hammered the country in 2001-2002, The Wall Street Journal reported. Economists welcomed the moves, but doubted they would work without an attack on the real source of the country's mounting economic problems: rampant government spending and a loose money policy that has caused one of the world's highest rates of inflation, estimated at more than 25% a year.