Cold comfort

Argentina’s economy is finding its feet again after the economic collapse of 2002. But this is of little relief to the country’s creditors, who are still waiting for payment on $100 billion of defaulted bonds. By Josh Goodman

The good times are back in Buenos Aires. Thanks to a surge in tourism, hotels are overbooked and restaurants are filling up on normally slow Monday nights. Despite a construction boom, real-estate prices in tiny neighborhoods are rising by as much as 50% annually.

Nor is the spending frenzy limited to the country’s traditional, export-linked elites, for whom the mega-devaluation of the peso in 2001 was a windfall. In March, new car sales soared 30% from the previous month and for all of 2004 the