Saturday, December 13, 2008

Sovereign Risk

Bekaert and Hodrick (p. 508) define sovereign risk as the risk of a government defaulting on its bonds payments (this is different from what appears on Investopedia and YourDictionary). You should read an article in today's Washington post titled:"Calling Foreign Debt 'Immoral' Leader Allows Ecuador to Default". Yesterday's Wall Street Journal also had an auricle on this subject that you might (or not) want to use for your next submission. I am using the Post's article because it relates a comment from a Moody's senior analyst. Well, less than a month ago,Moody's has downgraded Ecuador's sovereign debt but gently: it moved it to Caa1. It was only last April that Moody's still rated Ecuador as B3. At any rate, as you can read in the Post's article, investors have already taken this into consideration and traded this debt at a very deep discount (though not as bad a discount as Moody's stock which lost 75% of its value in the last two years.

The relevant chapter to read is: Chapter 14. BUT: please skip all sections that contain formulas Such as 14.2.

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