Argentina says Ciao Default, paying holdouts after 14 years.

[forest444]

4. And sometimes the living as well.

Take this Argentina case:

Singer bought $48 million in old Argentine bonds in 2008 - three years after Argentina resumed payment to most bondholders in 2005 (thus exiting from its 2002 default).

Accepting a market value payout would have still give Singer $200 million, and the offer was always on the table. But Singer, you see, also had CDS default insurance on these same bonds - meaning that he had to trigger a default (or something like it) in order to cash in.

Judge Greasa, of course, obliged by blocking payment to all the good faith bondholders - the first time in sovereign bond history that courts stop payment to most bondholders in order to pressure the country into paying a few.

Now, with the new right-wing GOP clone they narrowly elected last November (Macri), this payout basically endorses the whole scam. And a result, it's not a matter of if but when some future vulture fund (possibly Singer's) comes after other countries' bonds - even U.S. bonds.

All that's needed is a "default-like" event, even a completely manufactured one like, say, the situation Eric Cantor almost put us in back in 2011. Now that vultures have the precedent, if the GOP should trigger even a temporary U.S. default it may be very hard to emerge from it.

All Singer would have to do is demand that to release the hold he be given a 12-fold payout, the kind he just got from Argentina (the precedent).