Default

[A] superb account.

Default is a powerful, exciting and instructive book that clearly and surprisingly amusingly presents the ‘lengthiest, messiest sovereign debt restructuring in history’ (283).

This book is a pleasant surprise.

A scrupulously fair and comprehensive look at the trial of the century for sovereign debt.

Featuring excerpts from numerous legal briefs, oral arguments, and judicial musings and decisions—as well as revealing interviews with key participants—the book should be required reading for students of international law, and of interest to anyone wanting to understand what the “Trial of the Century,” as it was referred to in the press and among attorneys, was all about.

[Makoff] packs a lot of detail about the many overlapping legal cases, the players on all sides and the macro conditions into this “courtroom drama,” which doubles as a guide about challenging debt restructuring.

For students and professors, Makoff sticks the landing in authoring both a scholarly and practical history. Much ink has been spilt in academic circles on how sovereign debt markets work in theory. It took a practitioner like Makoff to explain how the world is rather than how it is supposed to be.

Alternating between spellbinding narrative and dry legal analysis, he describes the thrust and parry between Argentine governments and litigious investors….

It is highly readable, more relevant than ever, and absolutely required reading in these times of high sovereign debt, global tension and climate finance priorities, especially in less developed, indebted countries.

In his magnificent new book, Default, Gregory Makoff tells the story of one of the most fascinating (and surreal, I would say) episodes in Argentina’s history….The book is full of information, testimony from the main players, quotes from the international media, and statistical data obtained from various sources. All this makes it an important scholarly contribution to the literature on sovereign defaults. But there is more to it than this. There is also a fair amount of gossip, and the book is written in a lively style. It sometimes reads like a novel…. Makoff tells the story of the final negotiation, with all its drama and complexity, in a masterful way.

Makoff’s book is well researched, relying mostly on primary sources for citations and insider knowledge of IMF meetings and strategy….The book can thus be enjoyed by historians, economists and lawyers, as well as by casual readers, though few will be able to match Makoff’s knowledge in all these fields.

The book is revealing of dynamics that even close observers of the Argentine ordeal may have missed….Makoff has offered an enthralling guide through it.

Makoff grasps extremely important and diverse details from almost two decades’ worth of long and twisting negotiations, and successfully articulates them in a unique, pedagogic, and illustrative way.

Default is a well-researched book that answers the question of what happens when a sovereign nation cannot pay its debts.

Gregory Makoff, PhD, is a nonresident senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a former senior fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, he worked as a banker specializing in sovereign debt management and served as a senior policy adviser at the US Department of the Treasury.

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