Public debt of Argentina: from the last military dictatorship to the default of 2001

Abstract

The problem of public debt is one of the central themes to understand the Argentine history of the last decades. The recent episodes related to debt (crisis and cease payments 2001, exchanges of 2005 and 2010, conflict with so-called vulture funds, among others) can not be understood without addressing the process of indebtedness and the dynamics of relationships Associated, of which they are consequence. Specifically, the exponential growth of external sovereign indebtedness from the mid-1970s to the 2001 repayment crisis had major economic, financial, political and social ramifications: the accumulation of unsustainable debt levels, the growing interference of creditors On the guidelines of local economic policy and the transfer of a huge mass of resources for their payment, explain to a large extent the deterioration of fiscal accounts, the living conditions of large population groups, economic imbalances and persistent obstacles development. In this sense, the objective of this article is to reconstruct the historical route of the Argentine sovereign debt, describing its evolution and main transformations in the different stages between 1976 and 2001.