Headline of an op ed in today's Wall St Journal. Author is a John Tamny, director of Center for Economic Freedom at Freedomworks, editor of RealClearMarkets, and author of "Popular Economics". He has some credentials, although the name is new to me. His arguments make little sense to me, even after re reading the piece several times. He says "By erasing Puerto Rico's debt, Mr. Trump would be handing the territory's political class more money to spend inefficiently." Let's be real here. Fixing up after Hurricane Maria needs lots and lots of money. Puerto Rico doesn't have any money at all. There are only two ways for Puerto Rico to get the needed money, borrowing it, or getting it as a free gift from mainland taxpayers. Lenders are scarce on the ground. It's obvious to real people (but perhaps not to dumb as rocks Wall St bankers) that Puerto Rico doesn't have the money to ever pay off the $93 billion in debt they have already racked up. Those lenders won't get paid back, not ever. New loans won't get paid back either. Lending to Puerto Rico is just plain charity, loans that won't get paid off are charity, not banking.
The other source of money to fix up the hurricane damage is for the US Congress to appropriate the money out of federal tax revenue, or by selling some more T-bills, or both. This is charity, and there is a decent chance that the Congress will feel charitable and will cough up the money, especially if the MSM and the Democrats get on board with the idea.
The concept of "forgiving" Puerto Rico's debts is just psycho-babble. They don't have the money, they will never have the money, and the lenders are never gonna get paid. For that matter Puerto Rico declared bankruptcy a couple of months ago, which means they won't pay anyhow, even if they had the money, which they don't.
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