214 Years Of Sovereign Defaults In One Chart

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/31/2014 11:22 -0400

• Creditors
 
• default
 
• Sovereign Debt
 
• The Economist

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From 1800 to 1950, Argentina had been a relatively low frequency 'defaulter', but as the following chart from The Economist shows, since then (as we noted here) they have made up for it.

Argentina has defaulted on its external debt seven times and on its domestic debt five times since independence almost 200 years ago, putting it somewhere in the middle of the historical ranks of the world’s serial defaulters.

However, as WSJ notes, a long history of economic booms and busts have scarred the national psyche and left external creditors wary as the country hovers on the edge of  its second default of the 21st century.

Argentina first defaulted on its sovereign debt in 1827, just 11 years after declaring independence from Spain.

As The Economist adds,

Ecuador and Venezuela have both reneged on their debts ten times; four other countries have defaulted nine times in total, according to data from Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, two experts on sovereign debt.

Nine of the top ten defaulters are from Latin America, although many have shown no trace of the debt-default disease for decades. That, alas, is plainly not the case for Argentina.

h/t @palmerandrew via The Economist

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