PRESS RELEASE
Puerto Rico Will Default Again on July 1, Governor Announces: ‘The Money Isn’t There’
May 6, 2016 (EIRNS)—In an interview today with C-Span’s "Newsmakers" program, to be aired next Sunday, Puerto Rican governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla announced that his government won’t pay at least $800 million of $2 billion due July 1. "As of today, the answer is no," he told interviewers. "I don’t think we will be able to come up with any idea [of how] to have that money."
On Monday, May 2, the Government Development Bank defaulted on $370 million of $422 million due, Garcia noted. "The same will happen the first of July. We just don’t have the money." The default will be on senior General Obligation bonds, whose payment is constitutionally guaranteed.
On May 9, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will travel to San Juan, reportedly to show the Obama administration’s "continued engagement with the Commonwealth to overcome its fiscal crisis"—a meaningless statement expressing a non-policy.
Meanwhile, vulture funds continue to demand their pound of flesh from Puerto Rico. In March of 2014, many of these bloodsuckers bought up $3.5 bn. of the island’s debt, at 40% of its value, and now intend to sue Puerto Rico for the full face value of the bonds. Chief among these predators is Aurelius Capital Management, also involved in the attack on Argentina, Brazil and many other countries. Aurelius’s CEO Mark Brodsky, who used to work for vulture kingpin Paul Singer’s Elliott Associates, complained to The Wall Street Journal that "given the choice of emulating" former Argentine Presidents Nestor Kirchner and his successor Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, or current neoliberal President Mauricio Macri, "the Governor of Puerto Rico...has chosen the former."
