Democrats in the Senate said that they would introduce two bills today to give Puerto Rico broad powers to shed some of its $72 billion of bonds while also giving its public workers’ pensions priority over the bonds, the New York Times DealBook blog reported.
Puerto Rico in Distress
Video Features
ABI Analysis
Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives approved a bill to allow the island’s main water utility to issue debt with a stronger repayment pledge, a step aimed at allowing the agency to raise money needed to avoid missing payments on other bonds, Bloomberg News reported yesterday.
Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Ohio), chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, on Friday met with Puerto Rico Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla to discuss the island's financial crisis ahead of legislative rescue plans expected from Congress in the coming weeks as huge debt payments loom, Reuters reported.
William R. Clark, the mystery man at the heart of what is being called “a monumental fraud” in Puerto Rico, broke his silence this week, answering questions under oath about whether conspirators at the island’s electric utility overcharged residents by hundreds of millions of dollars and worsened the island’s debt crisis, the New York Times reported today.