Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
One of the more alarming anecdotes in “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff’s incendiary new book about Donald Trump’s White House, involves the firing of James Comey, former director of the F.B.I. It’s not Trump’s motives that are scary; Wolff reports that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were “increasingly panicked” and “frenzied” about what Comey would…
Puerto Rico’s apagón, or “super blackout,” is the longest and largest major power outage in modern U.S. history. Without electricity, there is no reliable source of clean water. School is out, indefinitely. Health care is fraught. Small businesses are faltering. The tasks of daily life are both exhausting and dangerous. There is nothing to do but…
An audit report published on Thursday suggests that debt-laden Puerto Rico may be able to void some of its borrowing because politicians exceeded constitutional debt limits and their own authority. The report, shared with MarketWatch, states that some of Puerto Rico’s debt may have been issued illegally, allowing the government to potentially declare the bonds…
(Corrects the date that Puerto Rico’s law for individual investors was enacted in the second paragraph, and corrects spelling of Kim Rueben’s name in the 31st paragraph.) It’s 2 a.m. at the La Factoria bar in Puerto Rico’s Old San Juan, a hipster joint with a sagging couch, tile floors, and Christmas lights that wouldn’t…
Read MorePuerto Rico poses a ‘substantial threat’: Strategist The bad news doesn’t mean investors are giving up. Two bands of mostly hedge fund bondholders continue to put pressure on local officials. They still hope to come up with a deal that gives Puerto Rico the money it needs to fund its operating budgets and, at…
IN 2013 Alejandro García Padilla, the governor of Puerto Rico, did his best to tell the territory’s jittery creditors what they wanted to hear. He called servicing the American-controlled Caribbean island’s $72 billion debt load a “moral obligation”. He reassured holders of its general-obligation (GO) bonds that the government could not default on them even if…
Its economy has been mired in recession for years. The public is fed up with austerity. Investors want big premiums to lend to a government deep in debt, with no ability to devalue its currency. Greece? Try Puerto Rico, the U.S. commonwealth whose long-simmering debt crisis—its $72 billion debt equals nearly 70% of its economic…
With all eyes focused on Greek ATM lines, collapsing Chinese ponzi schemes, and European bank implosions, one could be forgiven for forgetting about another crisis occurring closer to home. As we detailed here, Puerto Rico is now “in a death spiral” and PR bonds are collapsing this morning… “Surprise” Puerto Rico’s debt is nearly…
Puerto Rico can no longer make payments on its $73 billion in debt, according to Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla, who warns the island is perilously close to entering a “death spiral” “The debt is not payable … there is no other option. This is not politics, this is math,” Garcia Padilla told the New York…