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With the financial world transfixed by Greece's debt-driven meltdown, Puerto Rico announces it can't pay its $73 billion in debt. Once again, we're learning that welfare statism is no replacement for fiscal responsibility. Compared to Greece's $353 billion in debt, Puerto Rico's $73 billion doesn't sound so big. On a per capita basis, it's about a third less. But appearances deceive. Puerto Rico is in deep, owing actually much more than that amount. We learned this after a report on Monday, co-authored by former International Monetary Fund No. 2 Anne Krueger, revealed the island's finances are a shambles. The devastating...

Former US Presidential candidate and publisher of Forbes Magazine, Steve Forbes, used the platform of his magazine to pen an open letter to the prime minister and finance minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras and Yanis Varoufakis. The full text of his letter appears below. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Dear Prime Minister Tsipras and Finance Minister Varoufakis: You may have won a four-month reprieve of sorts from your creditors, but your situation is desperate, and everyone knows it, most particularly Europe’s paymasters, the Germans. As you just painfully learned, your ability to blackmail your creditors is a fraction of what it once was. Businesses,...

Greece joins Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe on the latest to be in debt to the International Monetary Fund. As Athenians rallied underneath thunderclouds to show their support for keeping Greece in the eurozone of single currency nations, their broke government defaulted on a $2.2-billion payment to the International Monetary Fund. At midnight on Tuesday, Greece joined Sudan, Somalia and Zimbabwe as countries in arrears to the IMF. Also at midnight, the bailout assistance package that began in February 2012 formally expired, leaving Greece without access to any emergency finances. In Washington, the IMF acknowledged that Greece had failed to meet...

<p>Greece and its principal creditors—the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund—should acknowledge that Athens will never be able to repay the €131 billion it owes, write down its debt and let the Aegean nation exit the euro gracefully.</p>

Greece banks to stay closed on Monday, Piraeus Bank chief says, after emergency meeting in Athens This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly

Like Greece, the Puerto Rican government has more debt than it can service, and some are calling for a bailout by U.S. taxpayers. The major Puerto Rican state-owned or controlled enterprises are all losing money, including the power authority which is insolvent. Puerto Rico is an American territory that was acquired from Spain in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. The island has a population of about 3.6 million, which is declining as many Puerto Ricans emigrate to the U.S. mainland or elsewhere because of the continuing economic stagnation. Puerto Ricans are American citizens, but their per capita income is about...

Humorist Lee Siegel wrote in The New York Times that he unashamedly and without remorse defaulted on his student loans. Am I a deadbeat? In the eyes of the law I am. Indifferent to the claim that repaying student loans is the road to character? Yes. Blind to the reality of countless numbers of people struggling to repay their debts, no matter their circumstances, many worse than mine? My heart goes out to them. To my mind, they have learned to live with a social arrangement that is legal, but not moral. Congratulations, Mr. Siegel.  You have figured out liberty....

There are some valid points raised in Lee Siegel's 1100 word rant against college loans (if not so much against college education). There are some bad ones. But two things are clear: the words "personal" and/or "responsibility" were used precisely zero times, and the op-ed writer, who described himself as "the author of five books who is writing a memoir about money", is hardly a glowing advertisement for an education attained (funded with either debt or equity) at one of the Ivy League's "best", Columbia University.That, or the return on money after spending nearly a decade in university and...

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has signed a law allowing Ukraine to impose a moratorium on repayment of its foreign debt until at least July 2016, a press release on Poroshenko's official website said Thursday. The Ukrainian parliament approved the bill, which could affect repayment of the country's $3-billion debt to Russia on May 19. Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier the bill de facto was an announcement of a default, casting a negative light on the professionalism of Ukraine's leadership. Moreover, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that Moscow would turn to an international court if the Ukrainian president signed...

Greece cannot make an upcoming payment to the International Monetary Fund on June 5 unless foreign lenders disburse more aid, a senior ruling party lawmaker said on Wednesday, the latest warning from Athens it is on the verge of default. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's leftist government says it hopes to reach a cash-for-reforms deal in days, although European Union and IMF lenders are more pessimistic and say talks are moving too slowly for that. Greek officials now point to a race against the clock to clinch a deal before payments totaling about 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) to the IMF...

The Greek government says that a “moment of truth” is coming on June 5th. Either their lenders agree to give them more money by that date, or Greece will default on a 300 million euro loan payment to the IMF. Of course it won’t technically be a “default” according to IMF rules for another 30 days after that, but without a doubt news that Greece cannot pay will send shockwaves throughout the financial world. At that point, those holding Greek bonds will start to panic as they realize that they might not get paid as well. All over Europe, there...

Greece is preparing to take the dramatic step of declaring a debt default unless it can reach a deal with its international creditors by the end of April, according to people briefed on the radical leftist government’s thinking. The government, which is rapidly running out of funds to pay public sector salaries and state pensions, has decided to withhold €2.5bn of payments due to the International Monetary Fund in May and June if no agreement is struck, they said. High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste...

snip...According to a 2014 federal oversight report from public research group American Transparency, taxpayer-backed SBA loans are popular with businesses serving “wealthy lifestyles.” The report, which analyzed SBA loans between 2007 and 2013, found that billions of dollars flowed to businesses that, in many cases, could obtain standard loans with standard interest rates. SBA loans offer advantageous low rates. snip Many of the loans, which ranged from $1 million to $5 million, went to luxury goods retailers, exclusive clubs, Fortune 100 companies, plastic surgery clinics and even private equity firms. Found among the list of borrowers were Rolex and Lamborghini...

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has described his country as the most bankrupt in the world and said European leaders knew all along that Athens would never repay its debts, in blunt comments that sparked a backlash in the German media on Tuesday. A documentary about the Greek debt crisis on German public broadcaster ARD was aired on the same day euro zone finance ministers met in Brussels to discuss whether to provide Athens with further funding in exchange for delivering reforms. "Clever people in Brussels, in Frankfurt and in Berlin knew back in May 2010 that Greece would never...

Back in March 2014 we forecast that it in the aftermath of the US State Department-sponsored coup in Kiev, it was only a matter of time before Ukraine (all of its sovereign gold having since "vaporized") succumbed to full blown hyperinflation and economic implosion. Less than a year later, precisely this outcome has finally played out, and as a result, the entire nation has finally entered its economic endgame, which has two conclusions: either it joins Greece in becoming a ward of Europe and the IMF (thank you Joe Q taxpayer), or it quietly fades away into insolvent "failed state"...

credit the world’s various political leftists for being brilliant at one thing. They have managed to assemble a coalition of interest groups whose vested interests should probably cause them to chase each other around in the street armed with shotguns. Nowhere is that awesome class divide among the left on greater display than in Europe where the Parlor Pinks infest Davos and the Street Marxians have taken electoral power in Greece. If you were to ask both Jeffrey Greene and newly-minted Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras whether they felt society should be unfettered by larger government or directed for its...

Russia has been downgraded to junk status for the first time in a decade due to the collapsing oil price, the tumbling value of the rouble and sanctions imposed because of its intervention in Ukraine. Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said the downgrade was caused by the country’s reduced flexibility to cut interest rates and a weakening of the financial system. The ratings agency said the Central Bank of Russia “faces increasingly difficult monetary policy decisions while also trying to support sustainable GDP growth”. “These challenges result from the inflationary effects of exchange-rate depreciation and sanctions from the west as...

Venezuela is really feeling the pinch from sliding oil prices. Now its bonds are in such bad shape that some investors are treating the country’s default as a near certainty. And they are taking action. How? Well certain banks have started to offer swap contracts that allow investors to fix the amount they can recover on insurance bought against a restructuring of the country’s debt, according to investors. If CDS contracts are triggered, the cheapest Venezuelan bonds trading in the market at that time will be used to determine payouts to protection holders. Those not wanting to take any chances...

WASHINGTON – Sen. Mitch McConnell appears on the verge of achieving his lifelong goal to serve as majority leader in the upper chamber after easily dispatching Democratic Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky Tuesday night, winning an unprecedented sixth six-year term in the process. The race was expected to be close according to the late polls but, as was experienced throughout Election Day, the surveys seemed to undercount Republican strength to a substantial degree. With all of the commonwealth’s precincts reporting, McConnell ended up with 806,689 votes, good for 56 percent of the total while Grimes garnered 584,625,...

First she admitted being part of a fraudulent green-card marriage -- now, a new report says Cylvia Hayes, fiancée of Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, partnered to buy land intended for an illegal marijuana growing operation in 1997. KOIN-TV reported late Monday that Hayes partnered with a man to buy the $245,000 property in Washington state using a $15,000 down payment in November of that year. The man who sold the couple the land told the station that Hayes and her partner soon stopped making payments, and records showed that Hayes gave up her interest in the property in April 1998....