Puerto Rico came to Congress last year because it desperately needed some sort of help: after a decade of deficit financing, it is now $72 billion in the hole. It owes much of that money to traditional individual investors and savers across the United States, who have lent it money over the last decade, and even more to current and future pensioners.
The law that Speaker Ryan pushed through Congress, PROMESA, was meant to be that help. It provided the island’s government with breathing room to get its fiscal act together and authorized an Oversight Board to oversee its finances and–crucially–give it the political cover to make difficult decisions and negotiate with its many creditors.
Unfortunately, neither the government nor the Oversight Board have followed the law and, as a result, it looks destined to fall short of meeting its goals of restoring fiscal responsibility on the island and returning Puerto Rico to the capital markets.
To date, neither the Board nor the Puerto Rican government has had discussions with its creditors on the either the development of the fiscal plan or any process for debt negotiations. Instead, their activities have culminated in the Oversight Board certifying a fiscal plan from the Commonwealth that falls short of–or outright ignores–requirements in PROMESA. The plan does relatively little to reform what’s broken in the Puerto Rico government, including wayward spending and bloated pension system, and instead achieves short-run fiscal solvency via significant haircuts for the creditors that, in violation of the statute, do not comport with the lawful or constitutional priority of Puerto Rico’s obligations.
In response, a group of creditors that owns over $13 billion of the island’s debt recently sent a letter to the members of the island’s Oversight Board asking it to reject the government’s fiscal plan. The signees are a diverse group, including general obligation bondholders, COFINA bondholders, a bond insurer, and others who do not always share the same perspective. However, they all agree that the plan is so flawed it cannot be considered a serious starting place for debt negotiations. Key among their objections is that the fiscal plan clearly violates PROMESA by both ignoring the law’s explicit call that it “respect the lawful priorities or lawful liens” that exist. The plan does this both by making debt subordinate to every single other government expense and by muddying the clear seniority of the various different creditor groups.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/puerto-rico-continues-ignore-congress
No comments:
Post a Comment