MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
By Jeff Macke, Yahoo Finance, Feb. 13, 2014
Over the last week both Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s have downgraded Puerto Rico’s bonds to “junk.” The move exacerbates the Island Commonwealth’s already crippling debt burden and raises the very real possibility that a US bailout could be needed to save it from a full-scale economic meltdown.
Puerto Rico has more than $70 billion in municipal debt outstanding, a sum comparable in size to New York and California, though both of those states have much larger underlying economies. Unlike those states or even the city of Detroit, Puerto Rico is unable to file for bankruptcy and restructure under the umbrella of American law. Puerto Rico is officially an unincorporated territory, leaving it in something of a grey area for legal purposes.
According to David Kotok of Cumberland Advisors, Puerto Rico’s debt obligations are about eight times the size of what Detroit is facing but without the same safety net for investors [....]
Comments
Found this when I googled to find out who were the underwriters of these PR munis. It is from last November and the author is hardly unbiased but it does have some interesting information:
by EmmaZahn on Sun, 02/16/2014 - 4:46am
Yes.
by Peter Schwartz on Sun, 02/16/2014 - 11:11pm
In search of answers to other questions about this story, I fell into a rabbit hole for half of today. Ended up with even more questions and learned some interesting things about Puerto Rico.
So thanks for posting this.
by EmmaZahn on Mon, 02/17/2014 - 6:47pm
Our unincorporated organized and unorganized territories are strange and mysterious things to most of us. That's owing in part, I think, to the fact that they were not included on those salt maps we all made in the fifth grade?
One of my favorite Richard Day stories was about a Puerto Rican client he once had who challenged a judge who had talked to him as if he weren't an American citizen.
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/17/2014 - 8:58pm
Oh, and likewise for your first comment, a great short explanation of wassup with that.
by artappraiser on Mon, 02/17/2014 - 9:02pm
by EmmaZahn on Mon, 03/03/2014 - 5:34pm