A deep dive from Bloomberg, July 7:
Number of developing nations trading distressed has doubled, with El Salvador, Ghana, Egypt, Tunisia and Pakistan appearing particularly vulnerable.
A quarter-trillion dollar pile of distressed debt is threatening to drag the developing world into a historic cascade of defaults.
Sri Lanka was the first nation to stop paying its foreign bondholders this year, burdened by unwieldy food and fuel costs that stoked protests and political chaos. Russia followed in June after getting caught in a web of sanctions.
Now, focus is turning to El Salvador, Ghana, Egypt, Tunisia and Pakistan — nations that Bloomberg Economics sees as vulnerable to default. As the cost to insure emerging-market debt from non-payment surges to the highest since Russia invaded Ukraine, concern is also coming from the likes of World Bank Chief Economist Carmen Reinhart and long-term emerging market debt specialists such as former Elliott Management portfolio manager Jay Newman.
“With the low-income countries, debt risks and debt crises are not hypothetical,” Reinhart said on Bloomberg Television. “We’re pretty much already there.”
The number of emerging markets with sovereign debt that trades at distressed levels — yields that indicate investors believe default is a real possibility — has more than doubled in the past six months, according to data compiled from a Bloomberg index. Collectively, those 19 nations are home to more than 900 million people, and some — such as Sri Lanka and Lebanon — are already in default.
At stake, then, is $237 billion due to foreign bondholders in notes that are trading in distress. That adds up to almost a fifth — or about 17% — of the $1.4 trillion emerging-market sovereigns have outstanding in external debt denominated in dollars, euros or yen, according to data compiled by Bloomberg....
....MUCH MORE
Cue IMF rescue/expropriation in 3...2...1...
