{Ha Habido dinero para los Miles de Anaudicistas (Amigos del Alma), pero No para cumplir con la Constitución, Leyes y Obligaciones Contractuales. Eso dramatiza el que mientras siga en La Fortaleza el AGaPoDesastre/PPD se acrecenta día a día, como han hecho el PPD en el pasado Medio Siglo.Hay que recordar “El Me Vale”; los 11 meses insultando a los Bonistas (la mayoría han resultado ser Puertorriqueños humildes) y Sin Darle La Cara; la cancelación de los contratos y proyectos para dárselos a sus Amigos del Alma; los Regalos de los Fondos Públicos como el de Ricky Martin; las inversiones fatulas como las del arroz y la caña; los Miles de Anaudices; los $15 Billones que ha “administrado” Sin Obras; las persecuciones a los Pro-USA’s; el Desmantelamiento del Gobierno; la Sustitución de los Oficiales de las Corporaciones Públicas por Activistas del PPD; el Batatarismo en los Departamentos, Agencias y Oficinas del Gobierno que No Trabajan Ni Dejan Trabajar; su Odio a la Libre Empresa y al Libre Mercado; su Mal Gobierno Chavista quizás con el proósito de Quebrar al Gobierno y a Puerto Rico para desmerecernos y evitar la Estadidad?}
News from the colonies
United States
Puerto Rico
The island’s debt crisis will put its political status under new scrutiny
Apr 16th 2016
The long road ahead
LAST December Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, promised that the Republican Congress would pass legislation to tackle Puerto Rico’s fiscal woes no later than March 31st. America’s cash-strapped Caribbean commonwealth needs a lifeline. After a decade of recession and population loss, some of its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have already missed interest payments. However, they cannot declare bankruptcy, because that privilege is limited to the 50 states. As a result, disgruntled creditors have sued, hoping to force the issuers to produce money they did not have.
Mr Ryan’s self-imposed deadline has come and gone, and the rescue bill is still stuck. On April 12th the House’s natural-resources committee released a new draft that offers Puerto Rico the essential criteria for a successful restructuring: a “stay” that temporarily suspends litigation while a fiscal plan is developed; the authority to impose terms accepted by a supermajority of creditors on all claimants; and the ability to modify all $72 billion of Puerto Rican debt—including the central government’s general-obligation (GO) bonds, which the island’s constitution guarantees will be paid before all other spending.
Sila/AAV Multiplicaron la Deuda de Puerto Rico Sin Obras – de $27 Billones a $69 Billones Sin Obras – Los Mayores Por Mucho Culpables del Desastre
However, this financial relief would come at a steep political cost: the imposition of an “oversight board”, similar to the one that ran Washington, DC from 1995 to 2001. Board members would be nominated by Congress and would have the authority to reject the Puerto Rican legislature’s budgets, write their own and order spending cuts by fiat. In practice, this would amount to a revocation of the self-government that the island has enjoyed since 1948.
The bill will face a steep path to becoming law in anything resembling its current form. Creditor groups have been lobbying furiously to prevent Puerto Rico from gaining the power to reduce its debt load without their consent, particularly regarding the supposedly sacrosanct GOs. In the Senate, Charles Grassley and Orrin Hatch, the respective chairs of the judiciary and finance committees, have said they oppose letting the island restructure its obligations. In order to compensate for the loss of votes from Republican legislators who are reluctant to harm bondholders, Mr Ryan and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, will probably need to secure support from some congressional Democrats, as well as Barack Obama’s signature. And Democrats—particularly with their party’s presidential caucus in Puerto Rico scheduled for June 5th—are likely to quibble with the imperialist overtones of dispatching administrators from Washington to run roughshod over the sovereignty of a poor, Spanish-speaking overseas possession.
On May 1st Puerto Rico’s Government Development Bank, whose coffers are all but dry, faces a $423m payment. A default would probably turn what so far has been a modest trickle of lawsuits from jilted creditors into a stampede. Two months later the next GO instalment comes due. The island’s legislature did pass a law on April 5th authorising the governor to declare a moratorium on debt service, but such powers would be hard to square with the GOs’ constitutionally protected status.
If the courts force Puerto Rico to tell police, teachers, doctors and firefighters to stay at home—which Alejandro García Padilla, the governor, has said he would refuse to do—a debt crisis that has so far been relatively contained and slow-moving would erupt into a cataclysm comparable to Argentina’s in 2001.
However these fiscal troubles are eventually resolved, the most important legacy of the island’s lapse into insolvency may be a re-evaluation of its political status. For nearly 70 years Puerto Rico, formally a United States commonwealth, has seemed to enjoy the best of both worlds: its residents receive all the benefits of American citizenship, while still being left to manage their own internal affairs.
But the recent debate in Washington has reinforced the long-standing argument made by opponents of the status quo: the territory cannot claim meaningful sovereignty if a Congress in which it has no voting representative can take over its government at will. If Puerto Rico were an independent country, it could simply renounce all debt issued under its law; as the 51st American state, its localities and SOEs could throw themselves on the mercy of a federal bankruptcy court. As a commonwealth, its only hope is that a pair of misfiring, polarised political parties 1,500 miles away manage to strike a deal to save it before the lights go out.
Confiado Pierluisi en conseguir votos de “PROMESA”
Una campaña en los medios de comunicación catalogando el proyecto como un «bailout» injusto para los acreedores, distorsiona la realidad, según el comisionado residente
El comisionado residente en Washington D.C., Pedro Pierluisi, se expresó hoy confiado en que el proyecto de ley denominado “PROMESA” vaya a votación la semana próxima en el comité de Recursos Naturales de la Cámara baja, luego de que el personal estuvo trabajando hasta altas horas de la noche para conseguir una herramienta de reestructuración que lograra el visto bueno del Tesoro federal.
Sin embargo, la oposición dentro del comité no se debe solo al lado demócrata, sino también a los republicanos más conservadores que catalogan la medida como un “rescate financiero” pese a que no compromete dinero alguno del gobierno estadounidense. La operación de la junta depende enteramente del “presupuesto territorial”.
Pierluisi indicó que hay intereses encontrados con una campaña en los medios de comunicación catalogando el proyecto como un “bailout” injusto para los acreedores, un discurso que adoptaron algunos congresistas republicanos al oponerse a la medida.
“La campaña está distorsionando la realidad e intimidando a miembros del Congreso antes que vaya a votación. Ese es nuestro reto: tenemos que estar seguros que tanto en las filas republicanas como demócratas están claros en cuanto a qué dispone esta medida”, confirmó Pierluisi.
En el sector republicano, hay oposición a conceder cualquier herramienta de reestructuración, mientras que dentro del sector demócrata algunos perciben el lenguaje como una hipocresía por requerir el voto de una super mayoría de los miembros de la junta.
Los republicanos Tom McClintock (California) y Rob Witman (Virginia) consideraron que el proyecto altera el estado de derecho, mientras John Fleming (Louisiana) lo catalogó como un “bailout” o rescate financiero.
Pierluisi no pudo asegurar que existan los votos demócratas a este momento, pero dijo confiado que tan pronto el Tesoro valide el mecanismo de reestructuración, “no debe haber problema en cuanto a recibir el apoyo sustancial en la delegación demócrata”.
El asesor del Tesoro federal, Antonio Weiss, expresó ayer que la disposición resultaba impráctica y recomendó acortar el periodo de moratoria contra litigios a solo diez meses en lugar de 18.
The long road ahead
You must be logged in to post a comment Login