Treasury Warns Of “Humanitarian Crisis” In Puerto Rico If Congress Does Not Agree To Bailout
“Puerto Rico is not Greece“… but it increasingly looks like it will be in a few weeks, thanks to US taxpayers who are about to foot the bill for yet another creditor bailout.
As we reported last night, creditors of the insolvent commonwealth, hoping to get a bailout and the highest possible return on their bond investment courtesy of the US taxpayer, have been pushing to portray the fiscal situation in Puerto Rico as beyond repair, hoping to force the administration and Congress to act. As The NY Times reported, on Wednesday, Puerto Rico took the unusual step of announcing that talks over restructuring about $750 million of the island’s debt had broken off, a move that some creditors saw as posturing to Washington for help.
Then, all day today, Puerto Rico’s leadership, realizing its interests are suddenly alligned with those of its creditors as a bailout is in everyone’s best interest, took the rhetoric up a notch when the island’s Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said in written testimony for Senate Energy Committee that Puerto Rico will have negative cash balance of $29.8 million in November 2015, and then added that the Puerto Rico Government Development Bank may be unable to make its $355 million debt service. “These GDB bonds are supported by a guarantee from the Commonwealth, and the GDB, which faces its own liquidity crisis, is not expected to be able to make the payment on its own based on current information.”
Others quickly chimed in: Puerto Rico Senate President Eduardo Bhatia said he would be in favor of “including everything” in a broad, comprehensive restructuring of the debt.
In short: bail us out now or face the consequences of a domino effect of defaults which puts not only the creditors, but the island itself, in dire straits.
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