Posted on 10/17/2015 12:40:51 PM PDT by Lorianne
Officials in the Treasury Department are discussing a radical and aggressive response to the fiscal chaos engulfing Puerto Rico that could involve a broad debt exchange assisted by the federal government.
The proposal calls for the federal government to help Puerto Rico collect and account for local tax revenues from the island’s businesses and residents, according to people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the proposal. An inability to collect all the taxes owed is widely seen as contributing to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis.
The tax proceeds would be placed in a “lockbox” overseen by the Treasury and eventually paid out by the Treasury to the holders of the new bonds that Puerto Rico would issue in the proposed exchange. Since the Treasury would effectively become the paying agent for the new bonds, they would be more attractive than the bonds that creditors now hold.
That would make it easier for Puerto Rico to exchange the new debt with creditors who hold bonds that have been devastated in value since the island warned this summer that it could not pay its debts.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Where is congress? Stop doing this with our money!!
You make some interesting points there that I will need to contemplate for a bit.
For which I will gladly repay you Tuesday.
I hope this lockbox is more secure than the one for Social Security.
“Hey seniors—sorry! No COLAs for you SS recipients, but don’t worry. 3 words: Aldi’s dog food.”
How about no until they fix the VA health system. Paul Ryan tried to take contracted money away from combat vets. For this type of crap.
He’s done. They’re all done
How about giving some money to hard working college kids whose parents and U.S. Have allowed tuition rates to go out of control
Paging Al Gore. Paging Al Gore. Have you seen the lockbox?
How many of us called that back when? Uh, huh, knew we’d be bailing them out. Hey, there’s some room in the back of the closet here if they want me to store that lockbox.
What you mean "our"? I had nothing to do with the stupidity. And I'd wager you didn't either.
Why not blame the guilty -- the GOPe?
Puerto Rico was running a government Ponzi Scheme for years.
They got caught.
Go get that money back from the politicians.
On or around 1905 Secretary of State John Hay recommended to President Theodore Roosevelt that the United States divest itself of many acquisitions of the Spanish American War. He indicated that we would lose money in trying to administer places such as the Phillipines and other spots far from our shores. Puerto Rico was on that list. Roosevelt did divest most of that list, but came up with some flowing oratory that we “had a burden of trust with the people of Puerto Rico that dictated that we retain them”. Although John Hay and Congress at that time insisted they be divested, Progressive Roosevelt dug in and saved the island for us. it is one of few instances where we kept a territory after a war with a foreign power.
When exactly did Congress authorize this?
L
One way or another, we will be paying for this.
Any finance company that puts together a bond deal that exceeds government income for the year at an 8+ percent interest rate (plus charges 3 percent of the funds raised for administration, and another 2 percent as deal closer) is a predatory lender.
It will never get paid off, much less paid off by 2020 when the bonds mature. To close budget gaps, the government went with this deal which gave 112% of the yearly tax collections to simply finance the GAP for the following 12 month, money that ran out in just 8 months.
No sane person would give them a loan, not with those kinds of numbers. Even Greece doesn’t monkey THIS badly.
Default is really the only answer.
you can’t have a ‘predatory lender’ without ready prey
meaning, the bank did not create the government’s fiscal situation. nor could the bank force the government to take out the loan, or any loan for that matter from them
(there are many other banks around the world, and private sources of funds, no governent has to do any specific deal with any specific bank)
just saying. the problem lies in PR, not Wall Street. The most one can reasonably say about the bank is that it (unlike many other lenders) was willing to lend money to a poor credit risk - and that the bank charged enough to, in its estimation, bedge the high risk of doing so. There are almost always some lenders who are willing to do some high risk loans provided, of course, they can justifying them with commenserate rates/fees. If PR’s credit was in decent condition, it could have found lower rate funds... probably from the same bank... or at least from any number of others. SO again, the primary problem lies with the politicians running PR, not with Wall Street.
just my opinion.
Then execute the risk - default.
If there’s no risk of default, there was no risk which required pretty extraordinary rates of interest, and even higher rates to put the deal together.
I’m not claiming that there are any angels in this scenario. But lenders priced in the risk of default, and pretty much ensured that either PR defaults or is bailed out, there’s no repayment option for these rates.
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