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A key Republican senator is leaning against establishing a federal financial control board to oversee Puerto Rico's troubled finances. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told reporters the U.S. territory may be better able to independently resolve its debt crisis rather than rely on legislation that would establish federal oversight. "We are not moving very fast on it," Hatch said when asked about his panel's consideration of the plan recommended last month by President Obama to help the island cope with a $72 billion debt. "Frankly, I'm not sure what we should do with it," Hatch said of the plan. "There are some people who argue they can work it out if they are willing to. That it can work itself out." Some members of Congress also want the federal government to help Puerto Rico escape its debt, which has grown thanks to a shrinking tax base, a 12 percent unemployment rate, and higher levels of spending. The Puerto Rica...

Puerto Rico is likely to default on at least a portion of Government Development Bank bond payments due Dec. 1 with the commonwealth’s cash crunch worsening, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The GDB, which lends to the island and its localities, faces a $354 million principal and interest payment at the start of the month, just as the bank projects it may run out of available cash, according to Puerto Rico’s Nov. 6 financial report. The commonwealth expects to post a negative cash balance this month and next. A default “would be consistent with our expectation that the commonwealth will be forced to miss debt service payments in favor of providing essential government services because of its increasingly weak liquidity position,” Genevieve Nolan, a Moody’s analyst, wrote in a Nov. 11 report. The Dec. 1 payment includes $267 million of bonds guaranteed by Puerto Rico’s general-obligation pledge and insured by National Public Finance Guarantee Corp. If the commonwealth were to mis...

 New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito on Sunday reiterated calls for President Obama to use executive actions to help her native Puerto Rico deal with a crippling debt crisis. “President Obama has weighed in on the issue, saying that congress should act and be helpful to the island. But also we believe that the president has executive ability to have either the Treasury Department or the Federal Reserve be more involved,” Mark-Viverito told John Catsimatidis on his Sunday talk show “The Cats Roundtable” on AM 970. “And we haven’t seen that happen. It’s coming to a head, it really is important that we get as much support as possible for the island,” she added, calling the fiscal situation in the island territory a “humanitarian crisis.” “Puerto Rico does not have access to bankruptcy protection like any other municipality would,” the East Harlem Democrat said. “It’s a very difficult time, verging on a humanitarian crisis here, and it’s important that the federal go...

The Puerto Rican government reported on Friday about $8.96 billion in total revenues in fiscal year 2015, some $604 million less than it had projected due to its stalled economy. Puerto Rico said in a financial report individual income tax collections were $61 million less than projected while sales taxes were $109 million less, signs of lagging economic activity on an island where the poverty rate is about 45 percent. Last month, the US commonwealth reduced its projected fiscal 2016 revenues to $9.45 billion from $9.8 billion, citing shortfalls at the end of fiscal 2015 that lowered the base used to calculate the following year's budget. Steps to make up the difference, it said, may require legislation or decreasing certain agencies' budgets. The government said it faces $69.9 billion in tax-backed debt, debt backed by good faith and credit, and other public sector debt. It defaulted on a piece of its debt earlier this year, and faces looming payments in December and January. ...

You should know that my beautiful Island of Puerto Rico, where I was born and grew up, is going through a very difficult financial crisis with a historic deficit of $72 billion dollars. You should also know that this week, on Thursday November 5th, there will be a huge March in Puerto Rico demanding for the United States of America’s Government headed by President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress to help solve Puerto Rico’s problem. Almost every elected official from New York, including Governor Andrew Cuomo, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYC Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz, Jr., State Assemblymen Marcos Crespo and Luis Sepulveda, and many, many others - Black, Hispanic and White legislators - who have traveled to Puerto Rico to join Puerto Rico's Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla in this March. It is important for you to know that there are some who say that because Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States, that...

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio described some hedge-fund managers as predators endangering Puerto Rico’s 3.5 million residents by demanding cuts in spending and services to ensure they’re paid in full on bonds purchased at cents on the dollar. “We’ve all heard the phrase ‘Follow the money,”’ de Blasio said during a City Hall news briefing a day after returning from the U.S. commonwealth. “There is a very powerful group of people in the private sector who are actually hoping that Puerto Rico fails. We can’t allow it to hold up action.” The mayor this week traveled to Puerto Rico in a group including Governor Andrew Cuomo and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, a native of the island who in August used the term “vulture” to describe investors who hold billions of dollars of its high-yield debt. The financiers have called for cutbacks in health care, education and public works spending so they can be repaid. The New Yorkers, for whom Puerto Ricans are powerful voting bloc,...

The Puerto Rican government reported about $8.96 billion in total revenues in fiscal year 2015, some $604 million less than it had projected due to its stalled economy, according to a financial report released on Friday night. Puerto Rico, which issued the report around 9:30 p.m. local time on Friday (1:30 a.m. GMT), said individual income tax collections were $61 million less than projected while sales taxes were $109 million less, signs of lagging economic activity on an island where the poverty rate is about 45 percent. Last month, the report said, the U.S. commonwealth reduced its projected fiscal 2016 revenues to $9.45 billion from $9.8 billion, citing shortfalls at the end of fiscal 2015 that lowered the base used to calculate the following year's budget. Steps to make up the difference, it said, may require legislation or decreasing certain agencies' budgets. The government said it faces $69.9 billion in tax-backed debt, debt backed by good faith and ...

One has to be encouraged by the fact that at least the U.S. Treasury appears to have learned something from Greece's economic crisis. Rather than pretending that Puerto Rico is solvent, the Treasury now recognizes that an early and orderly debt restructuring would be in the long-term interest of both the island and the collective of Puerto Rico's creditors. Similarly, rather than leaving the island to its own devices, the Treasury is proposing that, in exchange for bankruptcy protection, Puerto Rico agrees to an oversight board that would assure the full implementation of its fiscal commitments. If adopted soon by Congress, these proposed policies could spare Puerto Rico from Greece's tragic economic fate and enable creditors to get repaid a higher proportion of their loans than would otherwise be the case. While there are certainly many differences between Puerto Rico and Greece, there are a number of striking similarities. Those similarities suggest that Congress would ...

Hiring at American companies shifted into higher gear in October, helping to lift wages and clearing the path for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates next month. The 271,000 jump in payrolls reported by the Labor Department on Friday was much more robust than expected and suggested that economic growth had enough momentum to allow the central bank to begin its move away from the ultra-low, crisis-level interest rate policy it has been following for nearly eight years. While there is still a possibility the Fed could hold back, the underlying economic solidity evident in the latest jobs report will strengthen the hand of monetary policy hawks who have long favored an increase in short-term rates. At the same time, it should reassure Janet L. Yellen, the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, and a majority of her colleagues at the central bank that the economy can handle modestly higher borrowing costs without stress. “It was pretty much everything you could ask for in a jobs re...

The second act of Puerto Rico’s long-building debt drama is about to begin, and waiting in the wings is a veteran cast. It includes an embattled politician, his foe, the former executive of a failed bank, and those with roles in the Wall Street bailout, Argentina’s default and America’s biggest municipal bankruptcies. Locked out of the capital markets as it edges toward a record-setting default, the Caribbean island of 3.5 million people may run out of cash as soon as   this month.   With $354 million of   debt payments due   on Dec. 1, Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla would have to decide whether to pay bondholders or conserve whatever funds he can find to keep the government running. While Puerto Rico has   already defaulted   on securities backed by legislative appropriations, it may mark the first time the government has failed to make good on obligations guaranteed by its full faith and credit -- a pivotal moment that could haunt it for years. With a ...

Puerto Rico's governor submitted a long-awaited bill Wednesday to restructure the island's heavily indebted public power company as legislators rush to debate multiple measures to help keep the U.S. territory financially afloat. The measure was sent to lawmakers less than a day after the Electric Power Authority obtained a brief extension to finalize a deal with creditors and bondholders on restructuring part of its $9 billion debt. Many Puerto Ricans thought the bill would reveal details of an anticipated increase in power bills, but the measure said the proposed rate structure would not be revealed until restructuring bonds are issued. Power bills in Puerto Rico are on average twice that of the U.S. mainland and an increase would represent another burden for islanders recently hits with new taxes and tax increases. Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla's administration said it has lowered energy costs through artificial means in recent years, but those measures are not enough. I...