ARGENTINA may hyperventilate about greedy hedge funds right up to and past the point of another default on US$100 billion of bonds, but posturing and talk won’t stop events beyond its control from forcing a settlement with holdout bondholders, whether it’s next week, next month or next year, experts said.

    Faced with dwindling foreign exchange reserves, a looming recession, a US$6 billion principal and interest payment on another bond that matures next year, the nation can’t risk closing the door on access to international capital markets to solve a coming cash crunch and a potentially even bigger default.

    “At the moment of truth they [Argentina] will understand that they will have to negotiate,” said Claudio Loser, an Argentine who worked for decades at the International Monetary Fund and now is president of advisory firm Centennial Group, Latin America in Washington.

    “The Argentines, this team, is basically totally disconnected with reality,” Loser said Friday.

    That moment may arrive as soon as this week, when Argentina may send a team of government officials to New York to meet with holdout bondholders. President Christina Fernandez said Friday her government is ready to sit down with all of its creditors and be “part of a just negotiation.”(SD-Agencies)