Yet the problem in the sovereign debt world is also in some ways a larger version of the problem in the personal finance world.
It is exactly the same, though writ far larger, in the sovereign risk world.
Just as credit-fuelled personal debt spiralled out of control because there were no longer high street bank managers who knew the clients, knew the locality, and were able to make intelligent judgments about individual cases, so the sovereign debt world is now devoid of commonsense and balanced judgment in its dealings about nations.
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These hard-fought and inconclusive disputes define the sovereign-debt world, where there are no firm rules of engagement.
On Tuesday, I called Charles Blitzer (no relation), a former staffer at the International Monetary Fund with a longstanding interest in the sovereign-debt world in general and Argentina's travails in particular.
If, however, the U.S. is not really interested in a Palestinian state becoming sovereign, then the world's only superpower has a responsibility to the Palestinians and the world to articulate what it really believes and how to get there.
In a dynamic, uncertain world, sovereign control is always a fallacy.
Japan, as a sovereign nation and world power, can more firmly resist the new demand for its baseball resources.
But, in the absence of an international rule of law for resolving sovereign defaults, the world pays a higher price than it should for such restructurings.
