1. / Home
  2. / Events
Event

Forging a practical plan to improve our handling of sovereign debt crises

The 2008 financial crisis and subsequent developments in Europe and the United States have highlighted four major lacunae in our ad hoc approach to resolving sovereign debt crises: first, we lack a centre to drive continuous improvement in our processes for dealing with sovereign crises; second, we do not have a venue in which creditors and debtors can be brought together on a proactive basis to deal with incipient crises; third, once a crisis has taken hold, we need a reasonably automatic means to effect a standstill whilst solvency is assessed; and fourth, recent failures in activating collective action clauses (CACs) and rulings in NML vs Argentina complicate efforts to make a restructuring effective once its terms have been agreed. In this meeting, CIGI Senior Fellow Brett House will propose a practical plan of pragmatic, incremental steps that could be undertaken to address each of these gaps without requiring complicated treaty negotiations. House will review his proposal, joint with CIGI Senior Fellow Richard Gitlin, for a Sovereign Debt Forum (SDF) to facilitate faster, more effective and more efficient treatments of sovereign crises. He will explain how proposals for greater issuance of state-contingent sovereign debt, enhanced CACs and immunization of payments systems would complement the SDF.

Organised jointly with

RTEmagicC_GMF_Logo.jpg

Speakers

  • Brett House, Senior Fellow, The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
  • Discussant: Guntram Wolff, Director, Bruegel
  • Chair: Zsolt Darvas, Senior Fellow, Bruegel

Brett House is a Senior Fellow at The Centre of International Governance Innovation (CIGI), a Chazen Visiting Scholar at Columbia Business School, a Senior Fellow at the Jeanne Sauvé Foundation, and a Lecturer in the Economics Department at McGill, where his research focuses on growth, trade, sovereign debt restructuring, and impact investing. He is also a partner in and an advisor to Tau+ Investment Management, a start-up impact fund. Brett held previous positions with Woodbine Capital Advisors, the United Nations, the IMF, Oxford University, the World Bank and Goldman Sachs.

He tweets on @BrettEHouse and can be contacted on [email protected].

Event materials

Event summary Download

Practical details

  • Venue: Bruegel, Rue de la Charité 33, 1210 Brussels
  • Time: Wednesday 22 January 2014, 12:45 - 14:30 (lunch will be served at 12.45 before the event begins at 13:00)
  • Contact: Matilda Sevón, Events Coordinator - matilda.sevon[at]bruegel.org