G20: the protesters

"THERE'S MORE TO LIFE THAN PLAYING MONOPOLY!" says the sign.

G20: The delegates

I was standing in the Queen St mall and saw three men in very dark suits taking selfies. I approached them. Our dialogue was something like this:

-- You must be G20 delegates.

-- We're from Turkey.

-- Oh! Foreign minister Davutoglu was just giving a talk...

-- He's the prime minister now.

-- Well... I lose track - there's Gul, and Erdogan... but great to meet someone from Turkey...

(One shakes my hand, then they all head off.)

Argentina 2014

It looks like the president of Argentina won't make it to Brisbane for the G-20 meetup, because of health concerns. Given the headline topic of this blog, this might be a good opportunity to note that Argentina is possibly engaged in a sovereign mini-default at the moment. I say 'possibly' because the declarations that the country is in default have come from ratings agencies.

I found this article to be relatively plausible as a description of the situation. The 'partial default' is actually due to a decision by an American judge. Argentina has deposited money with an American bank, which is meant to be paid to some of its lenders, but the judge has blocked the transfer of the money, until Argentina agrees to pay 100% of its debt to certain holdout lenders from the 1990s. (What Argentina wants to do, is to instead renegotiate the debts, so that all the old lenders only get a certain percentage of what they are nominally owed, like maybe 30%.)

Allow me here to express my puzzlement that governments borrow at all - more specifically, puzzlement that most governments do it. Isn't taxing their own populations enough?