Читать книгу Retos y desafíos de las garantías reales - Abel B. Veiga Copo - Страница 73

Having, thus clarified the fundamentals of the debtor-creditor relationship, we now turn to the highly specific manifestation of this relationship, namely the one in which the debtor is a state. This particular type is fascinating for various reasons: not only that a state like (more or less) any other ordinary citizen is in need of borrowing money; it can, moreover, thanks to its immunity9 hardly be sued –and if so even harder to become forced to repay by the traditional means of the law of execution– and it cannot go bankrupt thanks to the still prevailing understanding that sovereigns float in an insolvency-free sphere10. That this understanding is –at best– a fiction will be testified by those many creditors of Argentina, Greece11 and many more states who found themselves confronted with partially enormous losses. The history of defaulting states reaches far back and lists plenty of cases; Germany, for instance, was bankrupt twice in the last century12.