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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Investor is too kind a term. They did not exactly buy those papers at nominal value.

So what? They're getting a discount for taking on the risk that they won't be able to collect from Argentina at all, and for the fact that they will have to file a lawsuit in order to collect. It's more efficient for everybody if a hedge fund buys up a bunch of bonds and tries to collect on them in a single lawsuit, instead of individual investors suing to collect the money piecemeal.

Well, given all this hassle, the papers weren't worth nearly their nominal value - and they actually gave money to the original lender, while Argentina didn't; so on that regard they're more fair than Argentina's government at least.

Argentina did give money (or rather, replacement bonds) to the original lender. Not 100%, but an amount they agreed to (which could equally well describe the holdouts' purchases). And Argentina has kept up the interest payments to the original lenders, right up until the holdouts got this court injunction to stop them.

No, Argentina didn't give money, nor replacement bonds to the original lender - they're the holdout's we're talking about.

They didn't agree to the restructuring amount, and kept the original bonds until selling them to the current bondholder; and as far as I understand, Argentina has not kept up the payments to those who refused the restructuring, that's the whole start of those court proceedings.

> "Not 100%, but an amount they agreed to"

They are holdouts precisely because they didn't agree to a haircut. Argentina declined to write a collective action clause into their bonds so that they could sell them for a higher premium. This is the price associated with accepting that risk.

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