Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:



Staatsanleihen
Schon wieder Zweifel an Argentiniens Bonität

Von Carl Moses


13. August 2008 Knapp sechs Jahre nach der letzten Staatspleite steht Argentinien möglicherweise schon wieder vor einer Finanzkrise. Das signalisieren die Kurse argentinischer Staatsanleihen, die allein in der vergangenen Woche um mehr als 11 Prozent eingebrochen sind.

Der Kurs der bei der Umschuldung 2005 ausgegebenen Euro-Anleihe mit Fälligkeit im Jahr 2038 ist seit Anfang 2007 um 40 Prozent gefallen. Jetzt stemmt sich die Regierung von Staatspräsidentin Cristina Kirchner mit dem Rückkauf von Staatspapieren gegen den Kursverfall.

Zum Artikel: klick (http://www.faz.net/s/Rub09A305833E12405A808EF01024D15375/Doc~E68FDE9BD3A644C44A473B75D3325E3D5~ATpl~Ecommon ~Sspezial.html)

historisch: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentinien-Krise

Tja, was soll man sagen? Chavez weiß natürlich auch, wo Bartel den Most holt.

ich habe, was internationale Verflechtungen dieser Art betrifft, aber zu wenig Ahnung, um die Situation einzuschätzen.

wie es kam, dass eines der reichsten Länder der Erde nach 1955 zum Dauerpatienten wurde, wäre in der tat einmal zu befragen...

Argentinien zahlt Schulden mit Pensionsgeld ... was soll man dazu sagen :nono:



Argentine Bonds, Stocks Plunge on Pension Takeover Speculation

By Drew Benson and Bill Faries

Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Argentine bonds plunged, sending benchmark dollar yields over 24 percent, and stocks sank the most in a decade on speculation the government will nationalize pension funds in a bid to attain financing and stave off a second default this decade.

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will unveil a new pension fund plan at 4 p.m. New York time today, the country's social security administration said in a statement. Fernandez will nationalize the system, giving the government control of $29 billion in retirement accounts, La Nacion reported, citing government officials it didn't identify.

Fernandez has struggled to raise cash to cover growing financing needs as the global financial crisis drives down prices on the country's commodity exports and erodes demand for higher- yielding, developing-nation debt. The government's borrowing needs will swell to as much as $14 billion next year from $7 billion in 2007, RBC Capital Markets, a Toronto-based unit of Canada's largest bank, said in a report today.

``The government is explicitly saying that it has problems meeting debt maturities and this is a last ditch measure to do so,'' said Javier Salvucci, an analyst with Buenos Aires-based Silver Cloud Advisors.

Yields on the government's 8.28 percent bonds due in 2033 surged 4.35 percentage points to 24.77 percent, the highest since the country issued the debt in a 2005 restructuring, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. The bond's price sank 7.91 cents to 29 cents on the dollar, leaving it just cents above the price on defaulted securities that investors held out of the 2005 renegotiation.

$95 Billion Debt Default

Argentina's benchmark Merval stock index tumbled as much as 12.7 percent today to a four-year low, extending its losses this month to 36 percent.

The South American country hasn't had access to international capital markets since it defaulted on $95 billion of bonds in 2001. Holders of some $20 billion of those bonds rejected the government's 2005 payout of 30 cents on the dollar, the harshest sovereign restructuring since World War II.

The social security administration didn't provide details on today's announcement. The press offices at the presidential palace and the pension fund regulator declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg News.

``This is negative, very negative, for the markets,'' said Mariano Tavelli, a portfolio manager at Tavelli & Compania in Buenos Aires. ``It's going to cause a sharp drop in confidence in the country and this government.''

Bond Insurance Swells

Nestor Kirchner, Fernandez's husband and predecessor, began tightening restrictions on private pension funds last year, requiring them to keep more investments in the country as part of an effort to sustain a five-year-old economic expansion. Kirchner also allowed people to move their money from the privately run funds that offered individual accounts to a government-managed fund that promised a set pension.

Argentina created the private accounts in 1994 with the aim of phasing out the government-run system. A government takeover of the accounts would probably require congressional approval, Tavelli said.

Argentina's private pension fund administrators managed 94.4 billion pesos ($29.4 billion) in savings at the end of September. About 55 percent of the investments are in government debt, according to the pension fund regulator's Web site.

Argentine bonds have lost 37 percent this year, putting them on pace for the worst year since the 2001 default, according to a Merrill Lynch & Co. index. The bonds lost 62 percent that year.

Wheat, Soybeans, Corn

The cost of protecting Argentina's bonds against default soared. Five-year credit-default swaps based on Argentina's debt jumped 1.57 percentage points to 31.18 percentage points, according to Bloomberg data. Credit-default swaps, contracts to protect against or speculate on default, pay the buyer face value should a borrower fail to adhere to its debt agreements.

That price means it costs $3.118 million to protect $10 million of the country's debt from default. In September 2006, it cost just $244,000 as record exports of wheat, soybeans and corn fueled economic growth and swelled government coffers.

Commodities have dropped 40 percent from a record high reached on July 2 as the global financial crisis has deepened a global economic slowdown, according to UBS Bloomberg CMCI Index of 26 raw materials.

Growth in Argentina, which gets more than half its export revenue from commodities, will slow to 5 percent this year and 2.5 percent in 2009, RBC Capital Markets said in today's report. The economy expanded 8.8 percent on average over the past five years as Kirchner and Fernandez used surging tax receipts to boost government spending on everything from civil servant pay rises to energy subsidies.

`Closer to the Abyss'

``Argentina is ever closer to the abyss,'' RBC Capital Markets said in today's report.

A pension takeover may add to capital flight as Argentines seek the safety of dollars, RBC said. The peso was little changed today against the dollar as traders said the central bank intervened in the foreign exchange market to shore up the currency. The peso rose 0.2 percent to 3.2163 per dollar, halting four days of losses.

The central bank sold ``large amounts'' of dollars today, said Gustavo Quintana, a trader with Lopez Leon Brokers in Buenos Aires. A central bank spokesman didn't return a phone call seeking comment.

To contact the reporters on this story: Drew Benson in Buenos Aires at Abenson9@bloomberg.netBill Faries in Buenos Aires wfaries@bloomberg.net;
Last Updated: October 21, 2008 12:30 EDT

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2....

Interessant besonders der Schluss!


von larouchepac.com




City of London Freaks Out Over Argentina's Nationalization of Private Pension System
Increase Decrease

October 23, 2008 (LPAC)--On Oct. 21, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner announced the re-nationalization of the private pension system, known by its acronym AFJP, which was imposed on the country in 1994. This was a partial privatization, which financier interests had eventually hoped to complete, based on the model of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinchet. They were horrified then, when Fernandez accused the ten private funds of carrying out a "a policy of looting," and asserted the State's constitutional right to take control of them on behalf of the general welfare. People come before banks, she warned.

The President's action unleashed howls of rage from the City of London and allied quarters, whose toadies claimed that Argentina's sovereign action had actually caused the sharp decline of stock markets around the world! "Concern of a second Argentine default in a decade rattled investors in emerging markets," Bloomberg reported. And the {Daily Telegraph's} own Ambrose Evans-Pritchard shrieked today that the President and her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner, were stealing the $29 billion in private funds in order to meet 2009 debt obligations. Argentina has become a "Latin Iceland," he argued, warning that other governments such as Ukraine, Pakistan, and Hungary were lining up to take similar action.

But in Buenos Aires, police conducted raids on many of the AFJP offices today. Speculating that the re-nationalization was about to occur, in the past few days the AFJPs had dumped huge quantities of state bonds on the market, causing their value to drop sharply, while at the same time, buying up large amounts of dollars, driving the value of that currency so high that it destabilized the exchange rate. Of $140 million in dollar-purchasing transactions, the AFJPs accounted for half of that amount.

Government prosecutors say the private system had caused "serious and irreparable harm ... not only to its affiliates but also to the Nation-State." The ten funds have been ordered not to carry out any transactions for the next seven days, while the government pursues a lawsuit that could land fund managers in prison.