Vultures, debt and desire: the vulture metaphor and Argentina’s sovereign debt crisis

This paper explores the development of the vulture metaphor in relation to economic ideas, focusing on its reference to vulture funds in post-2001 Argentina. It traces the metaphorical connection between ‘vultures’ and the extraction of debt back to Elizabethan England, to Shakespeare’s poem Venus and Adonis (1593). In the same period, we also see English law’s earliest cases of the predatory purchasing of land titles in order to dispossess the poor. Contemporary cases involving sovereign nations defending against vulture funds have cited case law in the Elizabethan context in order to invoke a moral claim against speculation in distressed sovereign debt. The moral charge of the vulture metaphor – laden with connotations of greed, desire and manipulation – contrasts with legal arguments about repayment based on the rationality of contract law which demands repayment of debt and presumes equality of party. I explore this tension in both historical and contemporary litigation, ultimately focusing upon the performance of position taken by vulture funds, on one side, and the Argentine government on the other, in the ‘case of the century’ – NML Capital v. the Republic of Argentina.