Click for the IMF’s “ex post evaluation” of its role in the Greek bailout. Its mea culpa.

And if you thought we were being harsh here, parts of the real thing are excoriating.

This is even though the report decides Greece’s exceptional access to IMF lending was justified (generally), and it still says much fiscal adjustment could not be avoided. Policies were “broadly correct”. But it does strongly suggest that debt restructuring should have come sooner.

Excerpts follow…

Sorry if a country got broken along the way:

Click to enlarge the document capping a weird week in the pari passu saga:

It’s an order from the Second Circuit on Thursday, denying an unusual request filed on Monday by the Italian retail investors who count themselves among Argentina’s holdouts.

Although looking back at it, was the unusual or just ahead of the curve?

A landmark decision by the England and Wales Court of Appeal on Monday falls under the latter…

Spot the difference edition.

For their part, the three judges of the US Second Circuit had ordered Argentina to tell them “how and when it proposes to make current those debt obligations on the original bonds that have gone unpaid over the last 11 years” (emphasis ours). It’s a last act in the battle that Argentina has been losing to stop restructured debt payments being linked to its defaulted bonds under the pari passu clause.

In practice, the 22-page letter that the government sent to the Second Circuit on Friday — containing “options” for holdouts to take payments “equitably and ratably” with bondholders who swallowed its 2010 debt restructuring, by getting restructured bonds in place of the original debt — pretty much was an offer.

And — it looks like — not one the judges can accept. Meanwhile, the market has panicked like wildebeest.

If you have been following the pari passu saga on ratable payment of sovereign debt — they tell their own story. (Click to enlarge all images.)

Last time we looked at what Argentina said; this part will cover its restructured bondholders; Bank of New York, their trustee; and the holdouts.

Though Argentina’s still hogging the limelight.

What a week for the pari passu saga, and the fight to show that an order for Argentina to pay holdouts ‘ratably’ alongside its restructured sovereign debt is both over-reaching, and an unfair threat to third-party bondholders and banks.

Yep, FT Alphaville also went along to the oral argument before three judges of the Second Circuit in NML v Argentina on Wednesday, along with about 300 other people. A pretty crazy affair in itself, the hearing has now led to a follow-up order from the court, telling Argentina to give “precise terms” explaining how it would pay holdouts, and how it would obey any decision of the Second Circuit.

So, if what happened in Greece last year was “exceptional and unique”…