Argentina’s history is like a rollercoaster ride. When you think that the economy has sunk to the absolute bottom, you find out that it can fall some more. And then, after a crisis and substantial cleansing, it rebounds and reaches new heights, only to fall once again. This pattern repeats itself decade after decade. I recently looked up how many times Argentina had restructured its sovereign debt since 1950. No fewer than nine times was the answer.

In his magnificent new book, Default, Gregory Makoff tells the story of one of the most fascinating (and surreal, I would say) episodes in Argentina’s history. It is the story of the fifteen-year litigation between the Argentine government and a group of bond holders that followed the collapse of the government’s convertibility plan in 2001. These investors had rejected Argentina’s offers for partial repayment of sovereign debt, upon which the government had defaulted. The book is full of information, testimony from the main players, quotes from the international media and statistical data obtained from various sources. All this makes it an important scholarly contribution to the literature on sovereign defaults. But there is more to it than this. There is also a fair amount of gossip, and the book is written in a lively style. It sometimes reads like a novel. 

Makoff writes that regular readers of the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times will be familiar with the events that led to the 2001 sovereign debt default, and the negotiations and litigation that followed. This book adds colour to that story and fills in the gaps. Makoff puts