Argentina in short....

Argentine Economy:

Reuters: “FINEWS-Argentina sells $550 mln in Treasury bills to state entities”

MercoPress: “Argentina’s industrial production up in April, but down
in four months of 2013”

Wall Street Journal: “Argentina's Stocks End Lower; 'Blue' Dollar Strengthens”

Economic Times: “Rating agencies alert to Argentina debt ruling,
souring economy”

DealBreaker: “Argentina Just Realized That One Of Its Default Holdouts
Owns A Factory In Buenos Aires”

Wall Street Journal: “Citibank Asks U.S. Court for Argentina
Bond-Payment Assurances”

Bloomberg: “Argentina Bond Judge Says He Can’t Rule on Citigroup Request (1)”

Argentine Politics/Corruption:

MercoPress: “Cascade of legal challenges to Cristina Fernandez Council
of Magistrates reform”

MercoPress: “Lawmakers accuse Cristina Fernandez before a federal
court of falsifying stats”

London Times: “Kirchner shakes up the soccer schedule but fails to
kick corruption claims into long grass”

MercoPress: “Program on Kirchnerite corruption exposure beats football
in Argentina”

MercoPress: “CFK calls for ‘empowerment of the people’ and another ten
years of Kirchnerism”

AP: “Huge crowd cheers Argentine leader's 10-year rule”

Buenos Aires Herald: “Challenges ahead after decade of growth”

Quartz: “The No. 1 problem with lists about women: Just because she’s
powerful doesn’t mean she deserves recognition”

Buenos Aires Herald: “A free press ensures a free society”

Buenos Aires Herald: “A decade of Human rights: no turning back”

Buenos Aires Herald: “'We don't want a divided Argentina,' Macri”

The Verge: “Google no longer able to pay Android developers in
Argentina, pulling apps on July 27th”

YPF/Biofuel:

Bloomberg: “YPF Slumps as Ruling Portends Compensation: Buenos Aires Mover”

Bloomberg: “Argentina, Indonesia Hit With EU Tariffs on Biodiesel”

Fox Business (Reuters): “Argentina's YPF loses arbitration over natgas
exports to Brazil”

Wall Street Journal: “Argentina's YPF Loses International Ruling in
Gas-Exports Case”

Reuters: “UPDATE 1-Petrobras says it has rejected offers for Argentine assets”

Global Relations:

MercoPress: “Argentina and Brazil ‘fear’ a greater integration with
China, says Mujica”

MercoPress: ““The Malvinas are Argentine, but also Latinamerican” says
President Correa”



Reuters
FINEWS-Argentina sells $550 mln in Treasury bills to state entities

Monday, May 27, 2013

Argentina said it sold two Treasury bills totaling about $550 million
to state entities in recent months, according to resolutions published
in the government's official gazette. The Treasury issued $382.7
million in two-year bills on Jan. 25, selling them directly to
state-owned Banco de la Nacion Argentina.


MercoPress
Argentina’s industrial production up in April, but down in four months of 2013

Monday, May 27, 2013

Compared with March, industrial output inched up 0.1% on a seasonally
adjusted basis, the INDEC national statistics institute said.

Argentina's economy, the third-biggest in Latin America, has slowed
sharply in the past year after booming during most of the last decade.
Analysts ascribe this to soft global demand, high inflation and the
negative impact of currency and trade controls on investment.


Wall Street Journal
Argentina's Stocks End Lower; 'Blue' Dollar Strengthens

Friday, May 24, 2013

By Taos Turner

BUENOS AIRES--Argentine stocks fared poorly Friday in light trading
while the black-market dollar continued to strengthen on media reports
that banks will further restrict the ability of customers to withdraw
cash while overseas.

The Merval index fell 1.34% to 3,509.72 in volume totaling ARS31.3
million ($5.9 million).

The power company Pampa Energia SA (PAM, PAMP.BA) led the declines,
sliding 3.4% to ARS1.14. It was followed by Petrobras Argentina SA
(PESA.BA, PZE), which fell 3% to ARS3.79.


Economic Times
Rating agencies alert to Argentina debt ruling, souring economy

Friday, May 24, 2013

Argentina's dismal credit ratings might get a boost if U.S. courts
rule in the country's favor in a long-running dispute with creditors
over a 2002 default, but souring economic conditions could hold the
ratings back, credit analysts said.

Argentina is still struggling with the fallout from its roughly $100
billion sovereign debt default 11 years ago. It has not tapped global
credit markets since then, mainly because of lawsuits by "holdout"
creditors who rejected debt swaps accepted by nearly 93 percent of
bondholders and sought full repayment.


DealBreaker
Argentina Just Realized That One Of Its Default Holdouts Owns A
Factory In Buenos Aires

Friday, May 24, 2013

By Jon Shazar

So they raided it, as part of a totally non-retaliatory tax
investigation. So non-retaliatory, in fact, that the federal tax
agency felt it could casually mention in its press release that Ken
Dart is among the “vultures” using “judicial colonialism” to deprive
Argentina of its sovereignty without raising any suspicions at all.


Wall Street Journal
Citibank Asks U.S. Court for Argentina Bond-Payment Assurances

Friday, May 24, 2013

By Ken Parks

BUENOS AIRES--Citibank has asked a U.S. district court to confirm that
its Argentine banking unit isn't bound by a ruling that bars the
Argentine government from making payments on bonds it issued under New
York law.

Despite a previous ruling to that effect, Citibank is once more
seeking assurances that payments made on Argentine law bonds held in
custody at Citibank Argentina are beyond the reach of any restraining
order issued by the U.S. court.


Bloomberg
Argentina Bond Judge Says He Can’t Rule on Citigroup Request (1)

Friday, May 24, 2013

By Bob Van Voris

The U.S. judge overseeing litigation over Argentine debt said he won’t
agree to Citigroup Inc. (C)’s request that he declare whether the bank
is affected by his order barring payments to holders of restructured
debt unless holders of defaulted bonds are also paid.

Citigroup this week asked U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa in
Manhattan for a ruling clarifying decisions in a case against
Argentina led by Elliott Management Corp.’s NML Capital. Citigroup’s
Citibank unit, which said its Argentina branch is custodian for bonds
issued under that country’s laws that are to be paid within Argentina,
isn’t a party to the NML suit.


MercoPress
Cascade of legal challenges to Cristina Fernandez Council of Magistrates reform

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The Council reform is one of several chapters of the controversial
‘judicial review’ which Cristina Fernandez is pushing through congress
with her operational majority.

“The way the members of the council are to be elected gives absolute
predominance to one political party and is contrary to the spirit of
the constitution” said Luis Maria Cabral, president of the Argentine
Magistrates association.


MercoPress
Lawmakers accuse Cristina Fernandez before a federal court of falsifying stats

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

In a press conference Alfonso Prat-Gay, Ricardo Gil Saavedra, Victoria
Donda and Humberto Tumini said that the report includes the crimes of
‘illicit association; misappropriation of public monies; defrauding
the government and a crime against the economic and financial order
for systematically falsifying Indec stats”.

“It’s impossible to lie with stats unless there is a specific illicit
association of government staff behind, among which is Moreno and
Cristina Fernandez” said Prat-Gay.


The London Times
Kirchner shakes up the soccer schedule but fails to kick corruption
claims into long grass

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

By James Hider

Authorities in Argentina switched the kick-off of the biggest Sunday
night football match to make sure that it clashed with a television
documentary setting out devastating corruption allegations against
President Fernández de Kirchner.

Even in football-mad Argentina, however, the gamble did not pay off.
More people tuned in to Jorge Lanata’s Journalism for All than watched
Boca Juniors versus River Plate, two of the country’s biggest teams.

The documentary series has been running for weeks, revealing a
coruscating critique of Mrs Kirchner, who was first elected in 2007
after the death of her husband Nestor, who had run the country since
2003.

On Saturday, Mrs Kirchner bussed in hundreds of thousands of
supporters to Buenos Aires for a rally to celebrate 10 years of
Kirchnerism, the left-wing update of Peronism. Her rule has tackled
human rights abuses and poverty and, initially at least, pulled the
country out of a disastrous economic crash.

But Mrs Kirchner has been plagued by accusations of corruption and an
increasingly authoritarian style of governance, while the economy is
in crisis again with spiralling inflation and limited access to
foreign credit.

In a wry nod to the deliberate scheduling clash, Mr Lanata, one of the
country’s leading investigative journalists, dressed in a football
strip to present his show, which accused an aide of the president of
carrying “bags of cash” this year from a vault in a former Kirchner
residence in their southern bastion of Santa Cruz. The cash was said
to have come from corrupt tenders for public works projects.

According to the film, the vault was hastily converted into a wine
cellar, but one of the labourers carrying out the removal of the
strong boxes took pictures with his mobile phone camera, fearing the
consequences of his involvement in the sensitive job. The worker also
filmed the farm house 40 miles away where the contents of the vaults
were said to have been transported.
The TV series runs on a channel owned by the Clarin media group, which
has been highly critical of Mrs Kirchner, who in turn is trying to
pass legislation to break up the powerful media conglomerate.

The documentaries have accused the Kirchners of using a series of
shell companies to funnel millions of dollars to foreign tax havens or
to their base in the south of the country. Mr Lanata said that the
subject of his latest programme, Lazaro Baez, had been a lowly bank
cashier a decade ago, yet now he controlled all the public works in
Santa Cruz province.

Mr Lanata said that, as Mrs Kirchner’s alleged bag man, Mr Baez had
amassed a fortune faster than Henry Ford, and now owned several large
farms, a fleet of Porsches and BMWs and a number of other properties.
Mr Baez has denied the claims as “nonsense”, and Mrs Kirchner’s
administration rejects allegations of corruption.

Mr Lanata says that in 2011, Mr Baez’s business recorded an income of
more than $254.3m from “mysterious” trust funds in Uruguay. However,
the investment, due to come from a Dutch registered company, was never
received, although a failure to record this kept the balance sheets
firmly in order.

With soaring inflation and Mrs Kirchner’s attempts to amend the
constitution to allow her to run for a third term, there have been
mass protests in recent months, with hundreds of thousands taking to
the streets and banging on cooking pots to vent their anger.

Officially, inflation is 10 per cent, but many analysts put the real
figure at closer to 30 per cent, and accuse the government of skewing
the data. The situation has become so dire that Mrs Kirchner has
frozen food prices and called on supporters to patrol supermarkets to
monitor any spikes.

She has also banned the sale of US dollars, driving Argentinians —
haunted by the memory of hyperinflation — across the border to Uruguay
to stock up on greenbacks as a hedge against their own unstable
currency.

Like her ideological fellow traveller Hugo Chávez, the late president
of Venezuela, Mrs Kirchner has become a deeply divisive figure,
beloved of the country’s poor but harshly criticised by the middle
classes and many economists.

“No one knows what will happen in Argentina,” said William Eid, an
economist in neighbouring Brazil. “Ever since the Second World War,
Argentinians have always chosen the worst governments. Now you see
Peru, Brazil, Chile and Colombia going in one direction, and Argentina
and Venezuela going in the other direction. I don’t know if they’ll
become the poorest countries in Latin America like that, if they are
so isolated.”