Argentina’s negotiating strategy of threatening to default on its loans to get its own way has underlined the case for greater IMF independence.

Alfonso Prat-Gay, Argentina’s central bank governor, talks to Karina Robinson about his plans for recapitalising the ailing financial system.
In the run up to my meeting with 38-year-old Alfonso Prat-Gay, governor of the Central Bank of Argentina, I had met 16 top businessmen, bankers and economists who were uniformly charming and informative. So I feared for the famed trait of Argentine arrogance (the classic joke told to me by a host of locals is: How can you make a lot of money? Buy an Argentine for what you know he is worth and sell him for what he thinks he is worth). It was with a sigh of relief, then, that I encountered Mr Prat-Gay, who has that famed trait in spades.

Social unrest and a government that turns a blind eye to problems means Argentina’s future looks bleak, reports Karina Robinson from Buenos Aires.

Argentina's spectacular sovereign debt default may, ironically, change international rules on dealing with such collapses while coming too late for the country itself. Suzanne Miller reports from New York on why the IMF may finally have run out of patience with its old friend.