Puerto Rican shutdown would increase default fears

Significance Puerto Rico is facing a severe fiscal crunch; its general obligation bonds are rated junk status and the government has said that a 2.9 billion dollar bond issuance -- at risk because of the congressional vote -- is required to prevent a shutdown in the next three months. Impacts There is little-to-no prospect of Puerto Rican statehood while Republicans control the US Congress. Puerto Rico would gain five representatives and two senators, likely to vote Democratic. However, this may encourage some Republicans to back federal intervention on debt, to ward off calls for statehood.

Significance Fiscal pressures are causing controversy in Puerto Rico, but so too is fiscal policy-making. On July 5, Governor Ricardo Rossello announced that he would seek a court injunction that would prevent the budget he has signed from being disallowed in favour of the nearly 9-billion-dollar budget devised by the US-based federal fiscal control board. Impacts Domestic and foreign investor confidence in Puerto Rico is likely to fall further, complicating economic recovery and reform. The episode will further damage Puerto Rican politicians’ credibility when they make representations to Washington. The polarisation over Puerto Rico’s long-term future, and the US statehood question, will deepen. Delays in repairing the island’s economy, and then reforming it for the future, could see worker outflows.


Ricanness ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 35-72
Author(s):  
Sandra Ruiz

Chapter 1 begins with Dolores “Lolita” Lebrón Sotomayor and fellow members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party staging an armed assault against the US Congress in 1954. The author analyzes Lebrón’s actions to expose how she offers death as a way to access subjectivity. She highlights the resilience of the subject who refuses the call to suicide, and instead offers us a recitation for Being. In paying attention to Lebrón’s bodily endurance as evidence of her desire to offer death for the independence of Puerto Rico, the author asserts that as a colonial subject the only thing that she owns upon entry into the world is her death. An understanding of her death drive is linked to Lebrón’s presentation of self, challenging the androgynous view of a female revolutionary. The important aesthetic details of her performance are not antithetical to other markers that claim and seek to trivialize her: beauty queen, mother of the nation, femme fatale, beautiful convoy, and hysterical, suicidal depressive. Lebrón is more than a sacrificing mother, a pathological terrorist, or an accomplice to male leaders; she stages a site through which to dismantle Rican patriarchy and restage death, both imposed and re-created by colonialism.


Significance The missed payment marks the island’s second default of 2017 after missing payments in January. The federal fiscal control board imposed by the US Congress has given the indebted Puerto Rican government until February 28 to formulate new budget proposals for the next two years and a ten-year fiscal plan. The control board also extended a temporary stay on creditor litigation to May 1. Impacts A public health or migration crisis involving Puerto Rico’s US citizens would present the White House with political difficulties. Holders of bonds from the highly indebted US Virgin Islands will watch congressional action on Puerto Rico closely. Cuts to employee benefits and tuition increases at the University of Puerto Rico are likely to spark protests.


Significance Under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) passed by the US Congress earlier this year, the oversight board can set the island’s fiscal policy independent of the insular government should no agreement be reached. Garcia Padilla will depart office in January and a governor from the pro-statehood New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico (PNP), Ricardo Rossello, will inherit the management of complex federal-commonwealth arrangements and the island’s economic and social crisis, as Puerto Rico restructures over 70 billion dollars in debt. Impacts Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’) would worsen Puerto Rico’s public health crisis. The Federal Reserve’s interest rate lift-off will punish US sub-national borrowers that have thus far avoided difficult spending cuts. Across-the-board US tax cuts, absent special measures, would see potential investors look to the mainland, rather than Puerto Rico.


Significance Over 6,000 state-level officials were elected on November 6. The results matter for state-level policy and the federal-level political conversation it influences, and for the political arithmetic of future elections. Impacts California especially will attempt to create a parallel policy track to that occurring in Washington. The Florida and Arizona Senate races face recounts; these would not change control of the US Congress in 2019. By 2020, pressure is likely to have grown for Puerto Rico and Washington DC to gain greater representation.


Subject Post-default politics in Puerto Rico. Significance While the US federal election will attract most national media attention over the coming months, Puerto Rico's governor, resident commissioner (non-voting representative to the US Congress), bicameral Legislative Assembly and local mayors will also be elected on November 8. Since Puerto Rico defaulted on its public debt in July, the next cohort of public officials will be charged with tackling an exceptionally complex knot of severe policy problems involving the island's finances, public services, pensions and constitutional status. Impacts The legislated requirement to use US-flagged vessels for intra-US shipping under the Jones Act will keep Puerto Rico's import costs high. Partisan rancour at the federal level is likely to complicate nominations for fiscal oversight board appointments. The response to Zika will place significant strain on Puerto Rico's already-weakened public health sector.


Significance Trump’s commitment to building a US-Mexico border wall means he may try to redirect additional funds from elsewhere for the purpose. Some of these could come from Puerto Rican disaster relief money. If this occurs, or if Trump rejects the bipartisan deal, it will add to Puerto Rico’s long-term fiscal pressures and aid needs, amid wider questions about the island’s constitutional status and development. Impacts Outward migration is likely to rise, especially as the US economy grows, constraining Puerto Rico’s economic diversification. The Democratic US House majority will raise Hispanic-American and Puerto-Rican American issues’ profile. New legislation for Puerto Rican US statehood may be introduced, but passage is unlikely. Puerto Rico will sue the Trump administration if it redirects money bound for Puerto Rico for wall-building.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Zia Wahdat ◽  
Michael Gunderson

PurposeThe study investigates whether there is an association between climate types and farm risk attitudes of principal operators.Design/methodology/approachThe study exploits temperature variation in the diverse climate types across the US and defines hot- and cold-climate states. Ordered logit and generalized ordered logit models are used to model principal operators' farm risk attitudes, which are measured on a Likert scale. The study uses two datasets. The first dataset is a 2017 survey of US large commercial producers (LCPs). The second dataset provides a Köppen-Geiger climate classification of the US at a spatial resolution of 5 arcmin for a 25-year period (1986–2010).FindingsThe study finds that principal operators in hot-climate states are 4–5% more likely to have a higher willingness to take farm risk compared to principal operators in cold-climate states.Research limitations/implicationsIt is likely that farm risk mitigation decisions differ between hot- and cold-climate states. For instance, the authors show that corn acres' enrollment in federal crop insurance and computers' usage for farm business are pursued more intensely in cold-climate states than in hot-climate states. A differentiation of farm risk attitude by hot- and cold-climate states may help agribusiness, the government and economists in their farm product offerings, farm risk management programs and agricultural finance models, respectively.Originality/valueBased on Köppen-Geiger climate classification, the study introduces hot- and cold-climate concepts to understand the relationship between climate types and principal operators' farm risk attitudes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Kaganiec-Kamieńska

Borders and Boundaries, Real and Symbolic: The Case of Puerto RicoThe aim of this article is to outline the real and symbolic borders and boundaries, of geographical, political, cultural and racial nature, in the history and present of Puerto Rico, and their role in shaping and transforming the Puerto Rican identity. The main part of the article focuses on the borders and boundaries between Puerto Rico and the United States. The second part looks at the lines dividing the population in the island and the Puerto Rican diaspora in the US. Granice rzeczywiste i symboliczne. Przypadek PortorykoCelem artykułu jest zarysowanie rzeczywistych i symbolicznych granic, geograficznych, politycznych, rasowych i kulturowych, wpisujących się w historię i współczesność Portoryko oraz ich roli w kształtowaniu się i przekształcaniu tożsamości portorykańskiej. Główna część artykułu skupia się na granicach biegnących między Portoryko a Stanami Zjednoczonymi. W drugiej części wskazano linie podziału powstałe między mieszkańcami wyspy a diasporą portorykańską w USA.


Author(s):  
Amílcar Antonio Barreto

Puerto Ricans, US subjects since 1898, were naturalized en masse in 1917. Congress did so to eliminate the possibility of independence from the US. That citizenship is the cornerstone of island-mainland relations for those advocating a continued relationship with the United States—either in the form of the 1952 Commonwealth constitution or statehood. The epicenter of Puerto Rican partisan life remains the status question. This remarkably stable political party system featured two strong parties of near-equal strength—the pro-Commonwealth PPD and its statehood challenger, the PNP— and a small independence party, the PIP. A core feature of the PNP’s platform has been estadidad jíbara—"creole statehood.” In theory, a future State of Puerto Rico would be allowed to retain its cultural and linguistic autonomy while attaining full membership as the 51st state of the Union.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document