Did Argentina rebound from its 2001 financial crisis by ignoring IMF advice? The New York Times says yes. Brad Setser says not quite. Indeed, at a very cursory glance, it's hard to blame the IMF here. They thought that if Argentina told all its external creditors to bugger off, bad things would happen. As it turned out, bad things didn't happen, because a whole new batch of creditors lined up to do business and loan out money. But the IMF can't very well give advice based on the premise that there will always be more suckers. Can it? Even if "always more suckers" seems to be the reality for nations that actually do default, that's no way to run an international finance regime.