Argentina's fight with the vulture funds went to the Vatican last week and to the UN this one #GrieFault

Argentine President Cristina Fernández is in New York for a presentation to the United Nations on Wednesday about reforming the sovereign debt regime to avoid the absurd situation in which a Nixon-appointed zombie judge can make up his own rules in support of vulture funds holding debt and thereby try to force a country into default, the situation Argentina has faced this year.

She had a meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and also with financier George Soros, bogeyman of the American right wing. Soros has a $450 million investment in YPF, the Argentine energy company majority-owned by the state. Pablo Gonzalez wrote for Bloomberg News in a July 31 report (YPF Shale Quest Seen Withstanding Argentina’s Debt Debacle 07/31/2014):

YPF will generate enough cash to finance operations for the next 12 months and has access to new funding sources, the Buenos Aires-based company said in an e-mailed response to questions yesterday. Since Argentina missed a July 30 payment on $13 billion of debt, the yield on YPF’s $1 billion of bonds due 2024 rose 0.15 percentage point to 8.2 percent. Similar sovereign yields rose 0.83 percentage point to 9.97 percent.

The company, control of which was seized from Spain’s Repsol SA in 2012, will be resilient in gaining access to financing operations to develop shale deposits in southern Argentina and boost production, according to broker-dealer Seaport Group. YPF is the country’s largest company.

“Argentina’s shale oil and gas reserves, overseen by YPF, make the company a key institution and it will have continuous access to financial markets,” Michael Roche, an emerging-market strategist at Seaport, said in a telephone interview from New York. “The company may structure securities where its earnings are escrowed outside of Argentina for use in repaying debt and receive attractive terms.”

According to the Argentine government's statements, Pope Francis was sympathetic to Argentina and the Group of 77+China in their fight for new international rules to provide for orderly sovereign debt defaults. (Victoria Ginzberg, Un almuerzo y una charla “naturales” Página/12 21.09.2014)

This is Part 1 of 5 of a special in TV Pública argentina documentary on the effects of sovereign debt in Argentina and the fight with the vulture funds and the Nixon zombie judge, Deuda: Historia de una extorsión (1 de 5) 20.09.2014:

Cristina also brought Victoria Montenegro with her on her visit with the Pope. Victoria is a woman kidnapped by the military dictatorship of 1976-83 and her parents "disappeared" and murdered. She was taken and raised by Herman Tetzlaff, an intelligence colonel - who headed the group that murdered her biological parents. (“El momento más emotivo” Página/12 21.09.2014; Vladimir Hernandez, Stolen baby hails 'liberating' verdict BBC Mundo 07/06/2014)

The current Argentine Pope didn't have the purest of records during the dictatorship; but at least for the moment he's making an effort to put his weight on the other side.

No incidentally, the military dictatorship loaded Argentine up with loads of debt in pursuit of the neoliberal economic policies. The Argentine people saw little if any benefit from it. But they were obligated to pay it off. Neoliberal darling Carlos Menem piled up even more during his Presidency.

Horacio Verbitsky in A Dios rogando Página/12 21.09.2014 writes:

Desde ese punto de vista, el encuentro en la residencia Santa Marta ha sido de mutua conveniencia, un día después del fallo de la Cámara de Apelaciones de Nueva York que dejó en pie las prohibiciones del juez Thomas Griesa y en vísperas del duro discurso contra el anarcocapitalismo financiero que la presidente pronunciará el miércoles ante la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas.

[From this point of view, the meeting {of Cristina and Francis I} in the Santa Marta residence had been one of mutual convenience, one day after the decision of the Appeals Court in New York that left in force the prohibitions of the {Nixon zombie} judge Thomas Griesa and in New York and days before the tough speech against financial anarcho-capitalism that the President will deliver this Wednesday before the General Assembly of the United Nations.]

Verbitsky, who wrote a four-volume history of the Catholic Church in Argentina, suggests that Pope Francis used the visit as a way to highlight the themes of economic justice he has chosen to emphasize.

On Cristina's visit with the Pope, see also: CFK, Francis meeting: 'Global financial reform, pope's constant concern' Buenos Aires Herald 09/20/2014.

And this TV report, Visión 7 - Cristina en el Vaticano: "El encuentro fue cordial y natural" TV Pública argentina 20.09.2014:

Tags: argentina, cristina fernández, jorge mario bergoglio, neoliberalism, european union, vulture funds