> The move appears to be related to new, restrictive > regulations the Argentine government has imposed on currency exchanges.' > According to the Telegraph, 'The new regulations required anyone wanting > to change Argentine pesos into another currency to submit an online > request for permission to AFIP, the Argentine equivalent of HM Revenue & > Customs. ..." This isn't likely to change soon. Back in 2001 the Argentine government defaulted on about $100 billion of debt. Since then they got 93% of the bondholders to agree to restructure and accept partial payment, and had been making payments to those and nothing to the other 7%. But an outfit called Elliot Management bought some of that 7%, took Argentina to court in New York, where the bonds were issued. and earlier this year the New York court decided that if Argentina pays anyone, they have to pay everyone, including the 7% that still demand payment in full. Argentina has tried a variety of gimmicks to try to pay the restructured bonds and not the holdouts, mostly with the effect of annoying the judge. Since the payments are made through Bank of New York, whose management has no interest in going to jail, nobody's currently getting paid, leading to great gnashing of teeth but no progress. For this most part, this wouldn't affect foreigners going to Argentina since we'd be changing hard currency into pesos, which the government encourages, since their supply of hard currency is very limited. (If they had more, they could pay off the holdouts, but they don't.) Except that the holdouts have done a lot of gimmicky things to try and get their money, notably slapping a lien on the Argentine navy's sailing training ship Libertad while it was in port in Ghana. If they slap a lien on an Argentine airplane, for example, things could be somewhat chaotic. These kinds of currency controls are quite common in the aftermath of a currency crisis, e.g., in Iceland and Cyprus, but Argentina has had a rolling crisis for decades. R's, John