Falling inflation has sparked an early surge in credit demand, which offers the prospect of banking normalization – a potential boon given the negative real interest rates banks are earning on their government securities portfolios.

Does Banco Galicia’s acquisition of HSBC Argentina validate president Javier Milei or weaken him?

President Javier Milei campaigned on cuts – and that is what he has delivered. But like all extreme diets, the approach is unsustainable. Time to rethink the plan.

Reports that the long-rumoured deal has been agreed suggest growing optimism among Argentine bankers about the new administration.

The cost to the government of supporting the Mexican oil firm’s debt could rise to 1.5% of GDP in 2025. Could it walk away?

Markets jump on the news that Javier Milei will be Argentina’s next president. A large devaluation is needed, but that leads to the risk of deposit flight.

If you owe the IMF $3.6 billion, it’s your problem. But if you owe the IMF $36 billion, it is their problem.

The frontrunner in the Argentine presidential election campaign has said he wants to abolish the peso and replace it with the US dollar. Is it blue-sky thinking or just greenback dreaming?

The country’s economy was already weak before a serious drought hit. Now it is broke, and the question in Buenos Aires isn’t whether finance minister Sergio Massa can muddle through to the presidential election at the end of October, it is whether he can make it to the primaries in August before a full-blown financial crisis.

When the news broke that Argentina was thinking of merging its currency with that of its neighbour, Brazil, my immediate question was: which Argentine peso?

Argentina faces yet another financial crisis and has brought in a new ‘super-minister’ to try to calm the market and placate the IMF. While he will find a sympathetic ear at the fund, not many other international investors are listening anymore.

Vaca muerta is an enormous oil and gas field, but it may be too late to exploit it.

Itaú’s Argentinian firm is its smallest. Nevertheless, innovation in its retail segment could be a game-changer in the country – and potentially the region.

Rebooting the financial system with a new currency could be what’s needed to give Argentina’s economy a way forward.

The Peronist playbook is back in force: Argentina’s monetization of fiscal deficits relies on the banking system buying central bank and government securities. This time around the movie has a new subplot: credit growth in both the corporate and retail sectors is increasingly taking place outside the traditional banking sector.

Given its reputation, it’s not surprising that Argentina’s bonds are pricing in a high chance of default in coming years. It’s a little harder to understand why the country’s creditors are enabling this.

Adopting orthodox policies in a bid to secure IMF agreement is a positive for Argentina, but regulations still restrict the banks compounding big FX exposures.

Who says the little guys always lose out?

Local scepticism over proposed debt offer rises as bid to include GDP warrants rejected.

Breathless reporting of the details of the Argentine government’s offer to bondholders tends to presuppose there is doubt in the outcome.

They seemed to be emerging, blinking, into the light of a normal financial system under former president Mauricio Macri, but that moment has gone; the new administration has sent real rates negative, while economic and credit growth look to be years away.

The new government’s decision to go after Mercado Libre has the sector worried.

The rhetorical battle between Argentina’s government, the IMF and bondholders is heating up but the bigger – largely ignored – issue appears to be the country’s looming financial collapse.

Road testing the likely economic and financial policies come the October general election.

Argentina is about to default; again. It will be the ninth time in the past 200 years, and the Latin American sovereign is about to test its ability to survive beyond the ascribed mortality of cats.

When Mauricio Macri won the last presidential election in 2015, the future for Argentina’s banks looked rosy: a spate of international debt and equity deals confirmed the optimism. No one who participated in those deals – including Galicia’s CEO Fabián Kon – thought the country would soon be back to square one.

Argentina’s politicians have played their cards for the coming presidential election – Cristina Kirchner surprised everyone by lining up behind Alberto Fernandez.

The government is pushing structural reforms despite the economic crisis; new tax regulations aimed to bring money onshore.

There are key differences between the growth outlook for Argentina’s banks today and that of Brazil’s banks from 2003 to 2008.

I can’t seem to stop worrying about Argentina in its election year.