With the government shutdown now entering its fourth week, it seems that it’s left many political pundits clamoring for an excuse to wash their party’s blame from the situation.

The paper money that funded the American Revolution led to post-war grievances, the most well-known of which was Shays’s Rebellion in backcountry Massachusetts. For years after the war the Boston legislature imposed taxes, falling mainly on those least able to pay, for the full payment in specie of the highly-depreciated notes issued during the war and held mostly by well-to-do legislators and bankers. As a further aggravation, the war was fought mostly by those on whom the taxes fell, while the elites stayed home.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul recently announced he was receiving hernia surgery as a result of being blindsided in an attack from his neighbor. While a senator undergoing common surgery is of questionable newsworthiness, one may expect that the reminder that the Senator is still suffering from the 2017 incident as cause for sympathy. Instead, major media outlets decided to try to use the news as an example of hypocrisy on the part of Paul due to the fact he is receiving treatment at a Canadian hospital.

After years of uncertainty following the country’s 2009 crisis, Greece’s corrupt government was replaced in January 2015 by a far-left government, elected because it promised the voters it would reject onerous bailout terms from Brussels. But it turned out that as far as the ECB and Brussels were concerned, Greece’s problems were to stay in Greece, and any hopes that its troubles would be shared with the Eurozone were dashed.

The issuance of debt is normally subject to a contract that it will be repaid at the end of its term, along with the coupon interest. The exception is undated bonds, when only the interest contract must be fulfilled. In practice, governments and many corporations roll over debt into new bond obligations at the end of their terms, but at least bondholders have the opportunity to be repaid their capital. Therefore, the credibility of government debt is based on the assumption the issuer can afford to continue to roll it over rather than repay it.

Argentina maintains a high country risk. In fact,  it is currently the second highest in Latin America and the third of the emerging countries if we include Turkey.

What is the country risk? It is the spread between the yield of the sovereign bond of a nation compared with the United States Treasury bonds, the lowest risk asset. Investors demand higher-yielding bonds due to the risk of the issuer’s economy, to compensate for the currency and solvency risk.

Grove City College will host the fifteenth annual Austrian Student Scholars Conference, February 22-23, 2019. Open to undergraduates and graduate students in any academic discipline, the ASSC will bring together students from colleges and universities across the country and around the world to present their own research papers written in the tradition of the great Austrian School intellectuals such as Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Hans Sennholz.

This month’s Liberty Matters forum is a discussion of the American economist Frank Fetter. Though he is neglected today, Fetter made vital contributions to Austrian economics and was a major force in spreading the ideas of the early Austrians in the United States (see here and here).