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Abstract
The economic harm being caused by the novel coronavirus may soon result in multiple sovereign debtors moving into default territory. But the existing playbook for dealing with multi-sovereign emerging market debt crises is blank. The path currently contemplated is a protracted country-by-country and contract-by- contract negotiated workout. We argue that since almost all the external debt of the emerging market world is under the laws of just two nations, and since these two nations have a strong interest in protecting the global financial system, they can intervene under extraordinary circumstances to provide a global coordinated solution. In what follows, we sketch out three techniques for implementing this idea.