VULTURE FUNDS SCOOPED up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Puerto Rican debt after Hurricane Maria hit - underwritten by Wall Street and purchased at a massive discount, according to new numbers compiled by the nonprofit LittleSis and provided to The Intercept.
Now it's time for the payoff. A deal agreed to last week between creditors, the Puerto Rican government and the Washington-appointed fiscal control board overseeing the island's finances could now funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to those same bondholders in the coming decades. There's also ample reason to suspect at least some of those funds will be siphoned from federal recovery dollars, intended to help rebuild after the storm.
According to court filings made public as a result of ongoing debt negotiations, several hedge funds have bought up massive amounts of Puerto Rican bonds in the year following Hurricane Maria, after which prices dropped. GoldenTree Asset Management, a bondholder for the Urgent Interest Fund Corporation - known by its Spanish-language acronym COFINA - owned $587 million worth of Puerto Rican government bonds before the storm, as noted in a filing dated August 18, 2017. As of another filing almost exactly a year later, the company owned $1.5 billion.
Tilden Park Capital Management, another COFINA creditor, increased the value of its holdings by $370 million over the same period. General obligation bondholders Aurelius Capital Management and Monarch Alternative Capital have increased their holdings from $39 million before the storm to $488 million as of the last filing. (Aurelius and Monarch both also hold some COFINA bonds.)
Due to complexities in the ways some bonds are valued, some hedge funds are reporting increases in bond holdings without actually purchasing more debt. Those bonds, called capital appreciation bonds, have been referred to as Puerto Rico's payday loans due to their predatory structure, in which interest is added back to principal, which increases exponentially over time. In the cases of GoldenTree, Tilden Park, Monarch, and Aurelius, the increases in reported holdings are so massive that they appear to be due to new purchases of debt.
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Showing posts with label Foreign Direct Investment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foreign Direct Investment. Show all posts
October 3, 2018
Political Report # 1372 Vulture Funds Stand To Make Millions In Wake Of Hurricane Maria
September 6, 2018
Abstract, Coloniality in the Appropriation of Nature: Agrofuel Production, Dependency, and Constant Primitive Accumulation in the Periphery of Capitalism
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Coloniality in the Appropriation of Nature: Agrofuel Production, Dependency, and Constant Primitive Accumulation in the Periphery of Capitalism
by Wendell Ficher Teixeira Assis, Sérgio H. Rocha Franco
The expansion of sugarcane monoculture for the production of agrofuels since the early 2000s has caused territorial reconfigurations in the Brazilian countryside. This territorial reordering represents both a lucrative way of employing idle capital and the geographical expansion of capital domains. In the process, new markets are created and leveraged by discourses of environmental conservation while air, soil, and water are depredated and indigenous people, peasants, and quilombolas are dispossessed and dragged into new circuits of accumulation. Linked to the continuous search for new fronts of accumulation and the increasing commodification of nature, Brazilian agrofuel production may be understood as an expression of the logic of coloniality.
Coloniality in the Appropriation of Nature: Agrofuel Production, Dependency, and Constant Primitive Accumulation in the Periphery of Capitalism
by Wendell Ficher Teixeira Assis, Sérgio H. Rocha Franco
The expansion of sugarcane monoculture for the production of agrofuels since the early 2000s has caused territorial reconfigurations in the Brazilian countryside. This territorial reordering represents both a lucrative way of employing idle capital and the geographical expansion of capital domains. In the process, new markets are created and leveraged by discourses of environmental conservation while air, soil, and water are depredated and indigenous people, peasants, and quilombolas are dispossessed and dragged into new circuits of accumulation. Linked to the continuous search for new fronts of accumulation and the increasing commodification of nature, Brazilian agrofuel production may be understood as an expression of the logic of coloniality.
September 3, 2018
Abstract, Foreign Direct Investment Policy and Development in Bolivia under Morales
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Foreign Direct Investment Policy and Development in Bolivia under Morales
by María J. Paz and Juan M. Ramírez-Cendrero
Since 2006, Bolivia has made major changes to its economic policy and development strategy, especially with regard to the treatment of foreign capital. Analysis of the change in foreign direct investment policy as applied to the oil and gas industry reveals that it has produced greater state involvement in and control of oil revenues but no great strides in gas investment, production, or industrialization. This result contributes to the current debate on whether foreign direct investment policy is the best means of development for resource-rich countries.
Foreign Direct Investment Policy and Development in Bolivia under Morales
by María J. Paz and Juan M. Ramírez-Cendrero
Since 2006, Bolivia has made major changes to its economic policy and development strategy, especially with regard to the treatment of foreign capital. Analysis of the change in foreign direct investment policy as applied to the oil and gas industry reveals that it has produced greater state involvement in and control of oil revenues but no great strides in gas investment, production, or industrialization. This result contributes to the current debate on whether foreign direct investment policy is the best means of development for resource-rich countries.
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