Puerto Rico in Distress

ABI Analysis

Congress has scheduled yet another hearing on the debt crisis slowly destroying the lives of millions of American citizens living in Puerto Rico. If this results in prompt legislative action, we should applaud the exercise of strong, even if belated, leadership, according to a commentary by Prof. John Pottow in The Hill yesterday.

Prices of Puerto Rico bonds suggest that investors are circumspect when its comes to possible progress in a debt exchange of the island’s securities and focusing on whether the commonwealth makes good on $711 million of principal and interest payments coming due, Bloomberg News reported yesterday.

Puerto Rico's Government Development Bank (GDB) on Friday presented some of the island's creditors with more details on a forthcoming plan to consolidate their bonds into a single bond exchange, in a meeting the GDB's president called "very positive and productive,” Reuters reported on Friday.

Top Senate Republicans with jurisdiction over Puerto Rico are working on a legislative proposal to help the commonwealth as it struggles with more than $70 billion of debt, countering a plan by the Obama administration, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The proposed bill will be finished “soon,” Robert Dillon, spokesman for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said yesterday.