Tag Archives: Puerto Rico

“Republican Rep. Jason Smith yelled a potentially racially charged remark across the aisle as Democratic Rep. Tony Cárdenas was at the podium.” (Roll Call) This behavior provides an insight into the sheer callousness of some people.Nonetheless, this provides a good example to remember what has happened in Puerto Rico, as they now face an impending food crisis, as funding for food assistance runs out. Should that happen, we will need to start calculations of excess fatalities, based on Mr....

Nearly five months after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, more than a hundred thousand US citizens there still lack clean drinking water, and almost one-third of the island has no reliable electric power. As initial life-sustaining recovery efforts still grind toward completion, Puerto Rico’s Gov. Ricardo Rosselló has wasted no time using his territory’s recovery as an opportunity to push a number of policy proposals right out of the “disaster capitalism” playbook: from privatizing the...

Never let a crisis go to waste. The Intercept Disaster Capitalists Take Big Step Toward Privatizing Puerto Rico’s Electric Grid Kate Aronoff

“It’s somebody’s money,” [House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark] Meadows told The Intercept after a House vote on the aid package this week. “It’s different if you could just print money and it didn’t come out of my pocket or your pocket. It comes out of the American taxpayer’s pocket… Where does this person think the money to pay taxes comes from if the state doesn't issue the currency first and only accepts its own currency in payment of obligations the state imposes?The InterceptFreedom...

There was likely a collective gasp at OppenheimerFunds Inc. yesterday when President Donald Trump made another of those market-moving pronouncements, telling Fox News that Puerto Rico’s debt would have to be wiped out. The President’s remarks suggested he thought the losers would be Wall Street banks. The President stated: “You know they owe a lot of money to your friends on Wall Street. We’re gonna have to wipe that out. That’s gonna have to be — you know, you can say goodbye to that. I...

I published a while ago a link to a piece by Argeo Quiñones and Ian Seda on the situation in Puerto Rico. Below a graph of GDP (in constant prices). Clearly the economy started to collapsed in 2007, more or less with the US recession. The difference is that there has been no recovery in Puerto Rico. Not surprisingly there is talk about Prexit (an exit from the US; even though the entry was incomplete and subordinate).

Argeo Quiñones-Pérez and Ian Seda-Irizarry discuss the crisis in this piece. They correctly point out the neocolonialist solution being imposed by the US administration. I find the imposition of a Fiscal Control Board (FCB) particularly problematic. Back when Argentina defaulted in 2002, Rudi Dornbusch had suggested something similar. At that time I sent the letter below to the Financial Times that had published his proposal. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Mystery of about-turn on Argentina ...