Argentina blames US for debt woes, denies default

Argentina blamed the United States on Thursday for the legal battle that forced it to miss a debt payment and, despite ratings agencies' declarations to the contrary, denied being in default. Ratings agency Fitch declared Argentina in ‘restrictive default’ Thursday after 11th-hour talks failed to resolve the country's dispute with two US hedge funds that refuse to accept a write-down on their Argentine bonds. Fitch's label echoed the ‘selective default’ declared Wednesday by Standard & Poor's. Both terms indicate that Argentina has defaulted on one or more of its financial commitments but continues to meet others. US District Judge Thomas Griesa has blocked Argentina from paying its ‘exchange creditors’ -- those who agreed to take a 70-per cent write-down after the country's 2001 default -- without also paying two American hedge funds that took it to court demanding full payment. Argentine stocks plummeted Thursday, closing 8.43 per cent down as the repercussions of the default began to set in. President Cristina Kirchner's cabinet chief, Jorge Capitanich, blamed the US government, Griesa and a court-appointed mediator for the messy legal dispute, which made Argentina miss a $539 million payment to exchange bondholders. ‘If there's a judge who's an agent of these speculative funds, if the mediator is their agent, what is this justice you're talking about? There's a responsibility of the state here, of the United States, to create the conditions for the unconditional respect of other countries' sovereignty,’ he said, according to AFP.