1918年布宜诺斯艾利斯州的拉博卡港建造汽车厂的决定在布宜诺斯艾利斯港建造汽车厂是阿根廷信心的大大投票。但这并不令人惊讶。当时，该国是一个蓬勃发展的产业能力，世界上第七大经济体，发电机占全球商业的7％。它的人均GNP名义上是阿根廷人比法国人，意大利人和西班牙语更丰富，并将他们留在美国人身后不远。福特汽车公司在布宜诺斯艾利斯开业的陈列室五年以前在布宜诺斯艾利斯熙熙攘攘的Calle Lavalle上蓬勃发展。La Boca Factory仅在曼彻斯特和波尔多的设施之后才仅是福特的第三种外国植物，甚至甚至是较大的阿根廷植物即将推出的。到1926年，福特在阿根廷组装了100,000辆汽车。
八十四年后 - 今年1月 - 福特在阿根廷冻结汽车生产，并停止出口。购买外币以支付进口部分的费用已经飙升至禁止水平;无论如何，潜在的汽车买家无法获得信贷。到2月中旬，汽车制造商正在考虑削减其其余2,900的剩余劳动力，五分之一。但也许在阿根廷的悠久历史中，该公司在布宜诺斯艾利斯·欧洲群岛拿出了全文广告，让阿根廷人向陷入困境的国家的承诺向阿根廷人放心：“你可以侮辱我们，你可以理解我们，但是你永远不会说，在艰难时期福特没有表现出脸。“
阿根廷的当前艰难时期，尽管在与经常性经济危机的既有成熟模式保持良好的情况下，是该国历史上最糟糕的。On December 23 the government halted payment on a portion of its $141 billion of foreign obligations, chiefly government bonds; it has been forced to sever a decade-old, one-to-one tie between the dollar and the peso. First, Buenos Aires devalued the peso, and then it allowed it to float freely. The Argentinean currency was worth about 49 U.S. cents late last month.
Abruptly ending peso-dollar convertibility was so wrenching, says former Argentinean Treasury secretary Daniel Artana, that it will be much harder for Argentina to rebound than it was for Brazil after its 1999 devaluation (see story, page 53) or for Mexico following its 1994 peso crisis.
“阿根廷实际上是美元化的，”目前布宜诺阿·德·德··德·查查·克里诺纳斯（Económicas）的BatinoInicanas的Bueno Aires为基本的首席经济学家。“现在，地毯已经从它下面拉出来。经济学家兑现贬值，应当被认为是如此严重的减少的信誉。无论任何好处，你都要看看被摧毁的东西的收费：a花金融体系多年来才能发展和获得信心。该国具有零可信度。“
通过最乐观的估计 - 政府 - 经济将在2002年进一步缩小4.9％，其第五年度萎缩。私人预报员将下降为7％或以上。该国今天的全球贸易份额略微为0.4％。阿根廷人均国民生产总值 - 2000年的7,500美元，贬值之前 - 现在比西班牙低50％，比法国低70％。
面对另一年深化经济衰退，几乎没有获得信贷，公司已经进入生存模式。绝望的现金流量，制造商正在倾倒库存，关闭装配线和派遣工人回家。伟大的希望是，这个政府 - 或一个新的人 - 可以创造一个稳定的货币制度。只有这样，商人说，只有商人，将能够利用更便宜的比索给予他们的竞争优势。
Some foreign enterprises, like FleetBoston Financial Corp., have publicly contemplated beating a strategic retreat. The Boston-based bank, lured to Argentina in 1917 to finance the wool trade, has already written off $538 million of its local assets, contributing to the bank's $507 million loss for the quarter. "For us to continue to operate in Argentina, it will be necessary to have a political and economic framework that's conducive to profitable operations," warns Fleet spokesperson James Mahoney. "In the absence of that, we would reevaluate our commitment."
Argentinean Treasury Secretary Oscar Lamberto, a longtime Per¢nist legislator who was named to his post in January by President Eduardo Duhalde, responds that FleetBoston's departure "would be unfortunate, but those are the risks."
像竞争对手福特一样，菲亚特暂时停止在阿根廷的生产，之后，在1998年的95,000辆汽车到去年仅31,600辆达到95,000辆汽车之后。“我不确定我们的阿根廷人已经为这个国家做了什么，”Lement Fiat汽车阿根廷总统克里斯蒂亚诺·克拉兹·哈佛大学毕业生。“情况是，它已成为不可能的操作。”
For precisely that reason, many foreign companies that bet big on the country in better days are licking their wounds and reevaluating their allegiance to Argentina. The list of prominent multinationals doing substantial business in the country - some, like YPF parent Repsol, because they bought Argentinean companies - reads like a corporate Who's Who: AES Corp., BellSouth Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., France Télécom, Liberty Media Corp., Motorola, Repsol YPF, Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Cos., Telecom Italia, Spain's Telef¢nica and Verizon Communications. Major foreign banks with a sizable stake in Argentina include Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, Banco Santander Central Hispano, Citigroup and HSBC Holdings. Several, including the big Spanish banks and Repsol, have publicly affirmed their commitment to Argentina.
公司的困境可能似乎在阿根廷的穷人甚至是中产阶级的贫困方面似乎尤其令人携带，因为比喻贬值和银行存款冻结了珍贵的储蓄。但事实是，这次，公司比以往任何时候都恢复到来。
“没有公司没有办法，”世界银行集团国际金融公司的全球业务战略总监Bernard Cheahan说，在阿根廷拥有12亿美元的贷款组合。“如果你回头看，阿根廷在过去十年中在哪里得到了任何增长？这是私人金钱。”与美国不同，阿根廷无法依赖自由消费消费者的军队来重振增长。
私人投资实际上与过去十年中阿根廷经济的贡献者差不多，现在占GDP的近五分之一。在20世纪90年代中期，外国公司在20世纪90年代中，将超过550亿美元进入该国，在最近的鼎盛时期激发经济。与此同时，政府的贡献已经减少了一半，不到2％的GDP。布宜诺斯艾利斯不仅破坏了销售的国家资产，也是销售，将国家石油公司私有化到邮局。“这位政府希望在这里为外国公司进行投资，”兰伯特库尔秘书长说。“我们希望公司在经济中扎根并创造就业。”
然而，无论如何，一系列旨在抗拒经济的政府措施已经达到所有可能导致反弹的公司陷入困境。上个月的混乱仍然是甚至是最基本的商业交易，从进口商品的适当程序到预约供应合同的有效期内。“该气候中的任何人都可以做任何人，”该国最大的非普通钢铁生产商Acindar Industria Agentina de Aceros财务总监JoséGiraudo说。“我们需要撤销，直到我们对未来的想法。”
已经造成了巨大的损坏已经向商业部门进行了。美元比索链接的落日和随后在阿根廷货币的相对价值方面引起了公司的资产，以仍可贬值的仍可贬低金额，同时将债务飙升在比索条款中（见框）。通过要求比索贷款作为阿根廷可能有一天贬值的风险的赔偿，银行家实际上鼓励公司以美元而不是比索，而不是比索。
公司获得了货币挤压。采用Autopistas del Sol，由意大利的Imprecilo，Spain的Grupo Dragados和当地投资者购买特许权，以便作为收费公路运营Panamericana高速公路。政府在比索术语中冻结通行证后，贬值削减了Autopistas的美元收入（签署了索赔到美元的合同，该公司表示。）面对2月1日到期的利息支付1870万美元，AutoPistas违约。“我们仍然没有任何倾向于未来将如何设定，”公司财务总监Matias Sejhezzo在默认之前表示。“我们的资产负债表已经被抛出了Whack到不可能让我们的手臂围绕它。”
然而，银行不是公司，厌倦了货币打击的冲击。对于贷款，银行必须尊重一个比索的预先存在的率;但对于存款，他们必须为每美元支付1.4比索。这一点独自威胁到16亿美元的损失，估计标准普尔银行分析师CarinaLópez。为了弥补这一巨大差异的银行，政府计划给予他们政府债券，但作为López的说明，债券的“实际价值是”涉及违约发行人的负债“。制定最重要的是，银行已经拥有30亿美元的政府债券，价值美元。
财政部长兰伯科承认“当然，我们了解银行角色的重要性。显然，没有银行没有经济。”他指出，该行政当局正在与银行进行“持续对话”。但他还观察到“阿根廷的银行尚未消失，有很多利润。每个人都有什么发生的。”
The government's emergency restrictions on bank withdrawals and on foreign transfers for repatriating profits or paying debts have precipitated a wave of defaults among corporations. Marta Castelli, a director at S&P, reports that the rating agency has put more than 35 companies in "selective default"- signifying that S&P doesn't expect them to be able to pay all of their debts - because of the way the dollar-denominated payments on their foreign debt have ballooned in pesos. The list includes some of the country's biggest names: Telefónica de Argentina and Telecom Argentina Stet-France Telecom, owned by Spain's Telefónica and France Télécom; BP's Pan American Energy; and CTI Holdings, part-owned by Verizon.
What companies need most from the government now, after so much turmoil, executives say, is a stable operating environment. Given that, they maintain, Argentinean companies are fully prepared to compete anywhere. Indeed, businesspeople contend that in spite of, or maybe because of, all the years of being hamstrung by an overvalued peso, a crippling recession and a welter of government taxes and regulations, their companies have emerged with drastically improved efficiency. The former state oil company, YPF, for example, once employed 45,000 workers and throughout the late 1980s lost roughly $300 million a year. Today, after being privatized and acquired by Spain's Repsol, the company employs 8,600 people and earned $1 billion in 2001.
但要达到允许公司蓬勃发展的经济稳定，政府将不得不鼓励该学科，为持续期提供两个关键的事情：负责任的货币政策和减少的赤字支出。并且记录并不放心该得分。是什么让阿根廷的困难如此痛苦，令人痛苦的是，它是一个卓越的成功故事的苦序。
不顾一切地抑制通货膨胀,达到了vertiginous height of 5,000 percent a year in the 1980s, Argentina's then-Economy minister, Domingo Cavallo, pegged the country's currency firmly to the dollar in 1991. The so-called convertibility rule - one peso equaled exactly one dollar - was written into the constitution. Buenos Aires could no longer blithely print pesos to fund politically inspired projects.
通货膨胀急剧下降，仅仅是两位数的数字，外国钱倒回全国。阿根廷受过教育的劳动力和比较富裕的中产阶级向该国对投资者的呼吁增加。到1994年，价格上涨的平均速度仅为4.2％，而经济率在5.8％的年度夹子上增长，最快的速度。
然而,第二年,墨西哥的灾难性的devaluation caused investors to pull back from Latin America, and although Argentina soon recovered from that setback, the Asia crisis began in 1997. This time Argentinean companies had to contend with a more severe credit crunch. And things grew even worse in January 1999, when Brazil devalued its real, putting Argentinean companies at a huge trading disadvantage because of the overpriced peso. Argentina slipped deeper into recession. Meanwhile, the government continued to overspend recklessly, despite the discipline of convertibility.
在1997年至2000年期间，政府支出增加了6％，而收入增加2％。这种不平衡使得更加借款，即使利率攀升，四年内将国债推高30％。利息的年度付款翻了一番，达到120亿美元。然后去年延迟布宜诺斯艾利斯将IMF目标透露了其预算赤字2.3％的GDP。
On December 5 the IMF confirmed that it would withhold a $1.26 billion installment of a $40 billion loan. During the last week of November, rumors that the IMF would delay the payment and that Argentina's central bank would impose withdrawal restrictions prompted a bank run: Anxious investors pulled $1.5 billion out of the banking system, almost all of it on a single Friday, just before withdrawal restrictions were announced. The financial crisis that would soon trigger default was thus set in motion.
Few businesspeople believe that President Duhalde can impose the fiscal austerity needed to win the IMF's blessing - and cash. As governor of Buenos Aires province, he increased public debt by 70 percent in one year, purportedly to fund public works projects, during his failed 1999 bid for the presidency. Nobody's first choice for president, Duhalde got the job on January 2 with the backing of the Perónist and Unión Cívica Radical parties, only after violent protests over economic chaos had ousted four presidents in two weeks and left 27 civilians dead.
这位60岁的Duhalde和他53岁的经济部长Jorge Remes Lenicov是一所旧学校的Perónisc，已经颁布了应急措施，有人说弊大于利。除了拆除货币佩格外，布宜诺斯艾利斯还夺回了数十名政府特许权合同，以便像高速公路和机场一样争夺令人荣誉，以便以美元偿还小存款人。2月底，政府对原油出口征收了20％的税，以资助公共支出，超过石油公司的艰苦异议。然而，它确保审查阿根廷的公司税法：公司在债务利息支付和金融交易上痛苦地抱怨。布宜诺斯艾利斯还计划在利率上提出仍然未确定的股权，这对某些公司达到了40％的利率。
行政当局承诺在新预算写入新预算后逐一案例承担公司的抓地力，在新的贷款中与国际货币基金组织进行谈判，并举行了比索上的交换控制。公司的愿望清单必然会漫长，包括加工商对巴西宽松贸易配额的愿望，以达到大规模的公共工程项目的呼吁。
目前的混乱是一种不可避免的，但恢复道路上的临时颠簸，争夺了Duhalde政府，该政府已经承诺由中央银行主持的独立货币政策，以及解除银行管制。
布宜诺斯艾利斯可能会看到一个更光明的未来，但公司克服了更多的保证 - 而不是没有理由。在过去两年中，汽车行业单独损失了6亿美元。制造商对当地经销商的汽车销售销售于1998年的40,000岁至今已有40,000至今左右。
“许多投资将被维持，因为这些工厂没有腿，你不能把它们带到另一个国家，”菲亚特阿根廷的rattazzi说，1996年开设了6亿美元的工厂。“但是让我们说新的最近来的钱会很慢。然后，可能会在线，如果事情放在轨道上，我们会看到。“
生存技巧
Companies may be critical to Argentina's recovery (story), but Buenos Aires hasn't gone out of its way to allay businesspeople's concerns or clarify currency laws and other rules by which companies live or die. Here's how three quite different enterprises are seeking to cope with uncertainty: Steelmaker Acindar Industria Argentina de Aceros was one of the great success stories of Argentina's convertibility era. The advent of the peso-dollar peg in 1991 gave Acindar access to foreign capital to convert onerous short-term credits run up in the chaotic 1980s into longer-term bonds and loans. With its finances in order, the company was able to invest $200 million in plant modernization between 1996 and 1998, boosting capacity by 30 percent.
不幸的是，时机已经关闭。虽然公司起初繁荣，但很快被亚洲危机的一两拳交错，邻近巴西的贬值。三年三年，从1999年开始，Acindar最重要的客户 - 国内建筑业 - 每年平均萎缩10％，而该公司的借贷成本上涨。
随着销售额下降30％，Acindar将其劳动力削减了一半，达到3,000。它试图通过销售更多的钢铁：40％的产量，现在出口了40％，而不是1997年的15％。但是原料钢的边缘 - 阿基林达的主要出口 - 低于高价值 -添加了本地产品。12月份Acindar表示，它不能再达到其4亿美元的债务支付，其中2.5亿美元是外国的。
暂时，该公司财务总监JoséGiraudo表示，该公司处于持有模式，即它等待了公司的政府基础规则。他补充说，与外国债权人的会谈可能不会塑造，直到Acindar可以起草一个令人信服的恢复计划，这将取决于其预测汇率，经济增长，利率以及公司债务的债务价值的能力。与此同时，该公司正在撤销进口铁矿石，石墨和备用机器零件。
Claudia Biasotti, chief financial officer of Capex, a thermal energy generator partly owned by El Paso Energy International of Texas, fondly remembers a time when fund managers from Morgan Stanley & Co. and J.P. Morgan trekked to her office in suburban Buenos Aires.
Capex有一个引人注目的故事来讲述。一旦透冰地就到位，Biasotti就可以挖掘国际债务市场，甚至在1994年推出了一家公共股票。该资金主要在1996年建造了一个天然气分离厂，并升级现有植物，升高了70楼百分。
结束于4月份的财政年度的销售几乎是1998财年的两倍，升级的植物上线的年份，比两年前高出三分之一。但资本公司的利润从那时起近一半的利润达到了近一半，达到1340万比索（以1340万美元，以预估汇率为1340万美元），而该公司的利息支付几乎翻了一番，达到3300万比索。公司的债务负荷自1996年以来大致增加了两倍，超过3亿美元。
当外部债券市场开始于20世纪90年代后期的阿根廷公司时，Biasotti转向由花旗银行领导的一组银行，Banco Santander Central Hispano的BancoRíodaLata，以及BankboSton设置了一系列较短的集合贷款维持扩张。现在，支本面临7200万美元的债务来源，但百差不担心她会延伸它的问题。
Nevertheless, Standard & Poor's analyst Sergio Fuentes has placed Capex on the agency's "selective default" list. He warns that Argentina's energy suppliers are at the mercy of a still-unreleased government pricing plan. The Duhalde administration is expected to come out with a pricing strategy for distributors, which in turn will be passed on to suppliers like Capex, says Fuentes. He predicts that power prices, which fell two thirds over the past decade, reflecting fierce postregulation competition, will remain flat in real terms for the near future. The analyst calculates that Capex's ratio of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to interest expenses - one measure of its ability to pay debts - will fall from 1.7 to 0.6 percent this year.
但是，Biasotti坚持认为，“我们在市场内的一个很大的位置，并与我们的银行家身站上很大。”她预计CAPEX的销售和收益将与贬值保持升值，随着更新的经济活动恢复能源需求。“当像资本支出这样的公司无法获得信誉时，”她争辩，“然后这个国家真的会在困境的海峡。”
Traditional manufacturing industries that were hammered by Argentina's embrace of free trade may stand to gain the most from devaluation. For the better part of the 20th century, Alpargatas thrived making cotton and leather goods, principally shoes. But in the early 1990s, Argentinean president Carlos Saúl Menem drastically lowered long-standing trade barriers. For Alpargatas - suddenly contending with an overvalued peso, labor costs that were 15 percent higher than in neighboring Brazil and operations that were inefficient after years of protection - the competition was overwhelming. Sales plunged from 423 million pesos in 1992 to 108 million pesos by 2000, and the payroll shrank from 15,000 to 2,000. Despite funding from the World Bank's private sector arm and U.S. private equity fund Newbridge Latin America, Alpargatas defaulted on its debts in 1998 and finally sought legal protection from creditors in December.
The company now requires wholesalers to pay cash up front; there's no longer a grace period. Sales have plunged 60 percent in just the past two months, and inventory has begun to pile up. Alpargatas has had to close six of its eight plants.
尽管如此，公司的总统Guillermo Gotelli正在计算较弱的比索，将公司回到外国竞争对手的水平竞争场。事实上，他预测今年销售额增加了30％，由出口到巴西，西班牙和美国。
“我们拥有原材料，我们拥有最好的设计师和最好的工程师，”Gotelli宣布。“我们没有理由我们无法提供最好的产品和服务。资本成本仍然是一个问题，但我乐观。”现在如此顽固的乐观，可能是阿根廷公司最关键的原材料。