Make no mistake about it: Puerto Rico will default in May on some of the $470 million it owes, according to Moody’s Investors Service.
The cash-strapped commonwealth is expected to fall short of paying $422 million to holders of bonds from the Government Development Bank, the credit rater said Friday in a report. It may also default on debt from the Employees Retirement System, Industrial Development Co. and Highways and Transportation Authority because the GDB has just $562 million in liquidity as of April 1, Moody’s said.
“These impending defaults would follow the government’s efforts to emphasize its severe cash depletion during the past year,” Moody’s analysts led by Ted Hampton and Emily Raimes wrote. “Even if federal oversight legislation is passed by the end of next week, Puerto Rico will still default because the commonwealth treasury and the GDB, which has long been the government’s fiscal agent, have insufficient liquidity for upcoming debt payments.”
Moody’s expects Puerto Rico to pay the less than $3 million owed to holders of general-obligation bonds and securities guaranteed by the commonwealth’s constitution to “avoid the almost certain litigation that would quickly follow.” Sales-tax backed debt, known by the Spanish acronym Cofina, will pay with funds already deposited with the trustee.
Appropriation debt from the Public Finance Corp., which accounts for 75 percent of all Puerto Rico defaults so far, will fail to pay yet again, Moody’s said.
Senator Schumer asked unanimous consent that the Senate take up and pass S.1774 , Puerto Rico Chapter 9 Uniformity Act of 2015. Senator Hatch objected. Unofficial Transcript : SCHUMER: I AM GOING TO ASK FOR A UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST BUT SPEAK FOR A COUPLE OF MINUTES AND ENGAGE IN SOME DISCUSSION WITH MY DEER FRIEND, THE SENIOR — MY DEAR FRIEND, THE SENIOR SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF UTAH. I WANT TO THAIPG HIM FOR COMING TO THE FLOOR TODAY ON THIS ISSUE. I’M — ON PUERTO RICO. I AM HEARTENED HE HAS EXPRESSED INTEREST IN WORKING WITH US TO GET DOES ON TO HELP OUR FELLOW CITIZENS IN PUERTO RICO. I ALSO WANT TO THANK MY FRIENDS, THE SENATORS FROM CONNECTICUT, NEW JERSEY, OREGON, WASHINGTON, ILLINOIS, AND MY COLLEAGUE FROM NEW YORK WHO IS HERE FOR THEIR STEADFAST SUPPORT FOR HELPING PUERTO RICO IN THIS TIME OF CRISIS. I RISE TODAY DEEPLY TROUBLED BY THE DIRE ECONOMIC, FINANCIAL, AND HEALTH CARE SITUATION IN PUERTO RICO. THE ISLAND IS FACING A FINANCIAL CRISIS, A HEALTH CARE ...
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew recently visited Puerto Rico in an effort to show the administration’s support for the beleaguered territory. Lew’s comments on his trip to San Juan and his January 15 letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) make it clear that when it comes to Puerto Rico, the administration largely equates “support” with “bankruptcy.” The administration’s well-intentioned desire to help the people of Puerto Rico is laudable, but it is a mistake to give Puerto Rico the power to rewrite its laws and contracts through a retroactive application of new bankruptcy laws. The administration’s position is neither good policy for Puerto Rico nor the United States. Ambac is one of the country’s largest guarantors of municipal and state debt. In Puerto Rico, we insure well over $2 billion of the Commonwealth’s various debt obligations, and our commitments to the island extend until the year 2054. Our financial support of the Commonwealth helped build i...
A new report from the World Bank just landed, finding that a record low of 10% of humanity now live in extreme poverty, down from 11% in 2013. But poverty rates aren’t anywhere close to equal between continents or even countries, as our new series of maps clearly demonstrates. The World Bank provides an in-depth explanation for its methodology, which you can find in Appendix A of the full report here . We focused on the percentage of people in each country living below what the World Bank defines as extreme poverty, or $1.90/day. We’ll let the researchers defend this definition on their own, but there is one caveat to keep in mind. It can be extraordinarily difficult to collect reliable data from so many countries on a regular basis, and in fact we used the latest year in which numbers were available whenever possible. For example, in some of these maps we compare 2011 figures against 2015. In short, our maps provide the clearest possible apples-to-apples compa...
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