Argentina-US relations have been frostier in recent years due to litigation filed by a vulture fund investor. But despite the heightened sensitivity, Washington is set to send to Buenos Aires an ambassador who admitted last year to barely speaking Spanish.
Late Monday, the nomination of Noah Mamet to the position passed a cloture vote. The Senate is expected to approve of his nomination Tuesday.
A political consultant, Mamet’s main qualification is that he bundled over $500,000 in donations for President Obama’s re-election campaign.
In his confirmation hearing, Mamet conceded that he had never been to Argentina and that he was not fluent in Spanish.
Although it is a common practice for campaign fundraisers to be granted ambassadorships, Republicans on the Senate Relations Committee bemoaned Mamet’s inexperience, given the country’s relative importance.
“Look, every president has made political appointments of political allies and donors and so forth,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told USA Today in February. “But not every country can you send a political appointee to, and Argentina is one of those countries that we can’t.”
In March, the Washington Post reported that Rubio put a one-week hold on Mamet’s nomination. In May, the paper’s Al Kamen reported that, while awaiting a committee vote, Mamet had begun studying Spanish.
Contention between the US and Argentina stems from 2008 bond market purchases by NML capital. A hedge fund subsidiary of a Elliot Management, a firm founded and managed by billionaire Republican donor Paul Singer, NML refused the so-called haircut that nine out of ten of Argentina’s other creditors accepted. Argentina offered new terms on its bonds after defaulting in late 2001 due to a catastrophic economic collapse, but NML has sought full payment on the bonds that it bought years later. It stands to make almost $370 million–or 770 percent profit, according to IPS News.
Making the matter even more fraught with emotion, NML has backed American Task Force Argentina, a lobbying group that has launched a campaign to paint Argentina as a state-supporter of terrorism and a “New Narco State” in order to build political support for creditors.
In June, the Supreme Court refused to hear Argentina’s appeal of a judge’s ruling that it had to pay NML before paying any American creditors who accepted the post-crash terms. In July, Argentina defaulted on sovereign debt payments. In November, the judge who issued the controversial ruling, US District Judge Thomas Griesa, granted Citigroup Inc. the authority to process an $85 million payment to Buenos Aires’ bondholders. Further hearings on future payments are set to be held in Griesa’s courtroom next year.
