Argentine bonds are posting the worst rout in emerging markets on concern the government is absent as foreign reserves sink, inflation soars, and the peso depreciates.

The nation's debt has lost 7.5 percent since Dec. 19, the last day that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner appeared in public after she had an operation to remove a blood clot near her brain in October. Developing-nation bonds have gained an average of 0.9 percent in the same period.

During Fernandez's absence, Argentina's foreign reserves have tumbled to a seven-year low, the black-market peso has lost 17 percent against the dollar, and inflation has quickened to 28 percent, the fastest in at least two years. Her disappearance from public view is fueling speculation that the government has no plan to confront a looming balance-of-payments crisis, according to Guillermo Calvo, an economist at Columbia University in New York.