There is nothing new in countries taking drastic measures in the face of faltering economies and currency crises – one needs only look to Mexico, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia and Brazil for examples of this in the past 10 years.
Such measures affected not only those living in those countries, but also foreign investors, who lost billions of dollars. In 2001 and 2002, Argentina, in response to its own economic crisis, enacted a series of measures, the ‘Emergency Laws’, that impacted on foreign investors. This included the removal of a parity peg between the Argentine peso and the US dollar that Argentina had previously agreed with foreign investors in relation to gas, water and electricity concessions. As a result, many concessions were no longer able to pay their dollar-denominated debt and defaulted on loans.
