|
A sovereign default () is the failure or refusal of the government of a sovereign state to pay back its debt in full. Cessation of due payments (or receivables) may either be accompanied by formal declaration (repudiation) of a government not to pay (or only partially pay) its debts, or it may be unannounced. A credit rating agency will take into account in its gradings capital, interest, extraneous and procedural defaults, failures to abide by the terms of bonds or other debt instruments. Countries have at times escaped the real burden of some of their debt through inflation. This is not "default" in the usual sense because the debt is honored, albeit with currency of lesser real value. Sometimes governments devalue their currency. This can be done by printing more money to apply toward their own debts, or by ending or altering the convertibility of their currencies into precious metals or foreign currency at fixed rates. Harder to quantify than an interest or capital default, this often is defined as an extraneous or procedural default (breach) of terms of the contracts or other instruments. If potential lenders or bond purchasers begin to suspect that a government may fail to pay back its debt, they may demand a high interest rate in compensation for the risk of default. A dramatic rise in the interest rate faced by a government due to fear that it will fail to honor its debt is sometimes called a sovereign debt crisis. Governments may be especially vulnerable to a sovereign debt crisis when they rely on financing through short-term bonds, since this creates a situation of maturity mismatch between their short-term bond financing and the long-term asset value of their tax base. They may also be vulnerable to a sovereign debt crisis due to currency mismatch: if few bonds in their own currency are accepted abroad, and so the country issues mainly foreign-denominated bonds, decrease in the value of their own currency can make it prohibitively expensive to pay back their foreign-denominated bonds (see original sin). Since a sovereign government, by definition, controls its own affairs, it cannot be obliged to pay back its debt. Nonetheless, governments may face severe pressure from lending countries. In a few extreme cases, a major creditor nation, before the establishment of the UN Charter Article 2 (4) prohibiting use of force by states, made threats of war or waged war against a debtor nation for failing to pay back debt to seize assets to enforce its creditor's rights. For example, Britain invaded Egypt in 1882. Other examples include the United States' "gunboat diplomacy" in Venezuela in the mid-1890s and the United States occupation of Haiti beginning in 1915. Today a government which defaults may be widely excluded from further credit, some of its overseas assets may be seized;〔 and it may face political pressure from its own domestic bondholders to pay back its debt. Therefore, governments rarely default on the entire value of their debt. Instead, they often enter into negotiations with their bondholders to agree on a delay (debt restructuring) or partial reduction of their debt (a 'haircut or write-off'). Some economists have argued that, in the case of acute insolvency crises, it can be advisable for regulators and supranational lenders to preemptively engineer the orderly restructuring of a nation’s public debt- also called "orderly default" or "controlled default". In the case of Greece, these experts generally believe that a delay in organising an orderly default would hurt the rest of Europe even more.〔Louise Armitstead, "EU accused of 'head in sand' attitude to Greek debt crisis" ''The Telegraph'', 23 June 2011〕 The International Monetary Fund often lends for sovereign debt restructuring. To ensure that funds will be available to pay the remaining part of the sovereign debt, it has made such loans conditional on acts such as reducing corruption, imposing austerity measures such as reducing non-profitable public sector services, raising the tax take (revenue) or more rarely suggesting other forms of revenue raising such as nationalization of inept or corrupt but lucrative economic sectors. A recent example is the Greek bailout agreement of May 2010. == Causes == According to financial historian Edward Chancellor, past instances of sovereign default have tended to occur under some or all of the following circumstances:〔(''Reflections on the sovereign debt crisis'' ), Edward Chancellor, GMO White Paper, Juli 2010.〕 * A reversal of global capital flows * Unwise lending * Fraudulent lending * Excessive foreign debts * A poor credit history * Unproductive lending * Rollover risk * Weak revenues * Rising interest rates * Terminal debt A significant factor in sovereign default is the presence of significant debts owed to foreign investors such as banks who are unable to obtain timely payment via political support from governments, supranational courts or negotiation; the enforcement of creditor's rights against sovereign states is frequently difficult. Such willful defaults (the equivalent of strategic bankruptcy by a company or strategic default by a mortgager, except without the possibility of the exercise of normal creditor's rights such as asset seizure and sale) can be considered a variety of sovereign theft; this is similar to expropriation (including inadequate repayment for the exercise of eminent domain). Some also believe that sovereign default is a dark side of globalization and capitalism.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Sovereign Default-The dark side of globalization and capitalism )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Sovereign default」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|