In the current global environment where trouble in emerging market economies is setting off worldwide alarms and stock market unease is Argentina setting precedents that will make it grueling if not impossible for emerging nations to restructure their sovereign debt Judging by other restructurings over the past four decades Argentina is an anomaly a case worth watching but unlikely to set any lasting legal or economic precedent. Ongoing litigation is predicated on what the Second Circuit uniquely recalcitrant negotiating strategy.
Until the s the act of lending to a foreign country was little more than an act of faith as economic advisor Herbert Feis said in . Given that sovereign immunity prevented nations from being sued in foreign Chinese Overseas America Number Data their consent the ability to enforce the terms of foreign loans often led to pitched political battles of will with the implicit threat of war as the only recourse for creditors. Between the end of World borrowing making default a relatively uncommon occurrence. The passage of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act FSIA in the United States in changed all that. After the passage of the FSIA sovereign debtors started to waive their sovereign immunity.
Private institutions could now sue foreign governments in US courts in the event of a default an epic change that many believe helped the sovereign lending market evolve on a grand scale. It also led to a wave of litigation that did little more than disrupt or delay sovereign debt restructurings. Over the next two decades lawyers lenders and borrowers realized the actual implications of the law Obtaining a favorable court judgment was possible with the right covenants collecting on that debt was not.