A little while back, that jackass that runs Venezuela said he was going to back out of the IMF. Unfortunately(?), many of Venezuela's outstanding bonds contained a provision promising to maintain IMF membership. Backing out would have been an accelerating default event. In other words, debt the state had decades to pay would all become due immediately. When informed of these facts, the jackass blamed America and pretended like he never said anything about backing out.
This absurd chain of events made me wonder if other sovereigns' bonds had similar clauses, or if it was just the ones run by bloated 'tards. I quickly discovered that less emotionally-guided states' bonds made similar promises. So, I did a little study and wrote a little paper.
Here are links to the paper and the underlying data:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/43737740
http://www.scribd.com/doc/43737963
Make what you will of this. I see it more as a basis for further research than a resolution to a question. If, as it appears to me, IMF membership clauses have little to no value, why are they there? Lazy lawyering? In my (correct) opinion, all legal documents, particularly contracts covering hundreds of millions of dollars, should be somewhat readable by the layperson, and should not contain any of the meaningless language lawyers are infamous for.
Perhaps I am too quick to blame lawyers, but I doubt it. I could be looking for too simple an answer. Just because a clause has no visible effect on interest rates or loan duration does not mean it has no effect. The aspects of the bonds that I did not analyze far outnumber those that I did.
That's about all I have to say about that. Hopefully N Korea did not just start WWIII, and I will be able to post again.
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