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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the oversight board established by Congress to help Puerto Rico out of a devastating financial crisis that has been exacerbated by the coronavirus outbreak, recent earthquakes and damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017. The justices reversed a lower court ruling that threatened to throw the island’s recovery efforts into chaos. In a unanimous holding, the court will allow the oversight board’s work to pull the island out of the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history to proceed. At one point, Puerto Rico faced more than $100 billion in debt and unfunded...

Amid a spiraling economic crisis in Puerto Rico, Congress established a control board to impose outside discipline. The Supreme Court on Tuesday will consider the board’s constitutionality in a case that ostensibly pits Congress’s plenary authority over U.S. territories against the Appointments Clause. Yet there is no real constitutional conflict between the two. Congress in 2016 enacted a law known as Promesa establishing a seven-member board modeled on Washington, D.C.’s financial control board of the 1990s. Promesa allows the board to oversee fiscal decisions and established a bankruptcy-like mechanism that authorized the board to restructure $70 billion in debt and...

Washington — Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied Puerto Rico's request to dispatch forensic units to Puerto Rico to help process a mounting backlog of bodies, the island's government has received a much-need reprieve. The fiscal board which controls spending in the U.S. territory will allow Gov. Ricardo Rosselló to use $1.5 million in funding to curtail the backlog in the island's morgue. …(snip) ...he FEMA official said these issues could be not be "attributed" to the natural disasters that struck the island, which triggered the first DMORT deployment. "These and the other courses of action ... address systemic...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Puerto Rico's federally appointed financial oversight board said on Wednesday it will investigate the U.S. commonwealth's debt "and its relationship to the fiscal crisis" which has left it with $72 billion in debt and a 45-percent poverty rate. The board, a creation of the 2016 federal Puerto Rico rescue law known as PROMESA, said in a statement that the investigation will review the fiscal crisis, examine the debt and how it was issued, including disclosure and selling practices. "The Oversight Board considers this investigation an integral part of its mission to restore fiscal balance and economic...

With each passing day, more compromising of national security, self-serving and self-enriching behaviors, frauds, scams and general malfeasance on the part of Hillary Clinton come to light via new Wikileaks data dumps. But the news media’s obsession with things Donald Trump has said consistently overshadows things Hillary Clinton has actually done. Revelations have now surfaced that Clinton backed the Puerto Rico Debt Relief Bill, a plan to help the financially struggling U.S. commonwealth deal with a $70 billion debt it managed to rack up, after a top Clinton fundraiser –who just happens to be a lobbyist for the Puerto Rican...

New York Senator Charles Schumer was instrumental in getting Bharara appointed to that position and in return was asked from time to time to do favors for the senator and his allies. Up until recently, President Trump had no idea what was really going on. Once President Trump’s staff understood the quid pro quo, they had no choice but to ask for Bharara’s resignation. In 2015, Puerto Rico defaulted on $70 billion in municipal bonds. Those involved panicked. There was ample evidence that the issuing agencies were technically bankrupt when they issued the bonds and that they purchased fraudulent credit...

Today President Obama signed the PROMESA (Puerto Rico Bailout) bill created by representative Paul Ryan, and with it the immediate suspension of the Fifth Amendment which was supported by a Senate vote yesterday. The Fifth Amendment protects U.S. Citizens from federal seizure of property without compensation. It applies in this instance to Puerto Rico via the general obligation bonds (property) purchased by municipal bond holders (investing citizens), which were supposed to be repaid, and which congress has now determined can be frozen. In addition, PROMESA suspends legal redress, by blocking bond holders (property owners) from suing the debtor (PR) to...

Yesterday House Speaker Paul Ryan pushed through a Puerto Rico Rescue bill called PROMESA. The details of the bill are fundamentally challenging to understand in scope, however, the key aspect to remember is the underlying benefactor(s) – Wall Street. While Ryan is severely adverse to PROMESA being called a bailout, that’s exactly what it is – only worse. The plan structurally changes the dynamics of how State debt is repaid, and the considerations for bondholders under the 5th amendment (seizure of private property w/out compensation); which will lead to a guaranteed bondholder bailout. However, beyond the ‘bailout’ aspect there is...