Political Report # 1255 Puerto Rico Is Emblematic of the Excesses of Financial Systems

By Janine Jackson, FAIR

You can find the audio for this interview here.  Janine Jackson interviewed Ed Morales about Puerto Rico's recent filing for bankruptcy amidst its debt crisis for the May 12, 2017 episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript. Janine Jackson: A CNN story headlined "Five Facts About Puerto Rico's Utter Economic Misery" invited readers to marvel at the $74 billion in debt and $50 billion in pension obligations that led to the largest municipal bankruptcy ever filed. Puerto Rico owes $8 million to Microsoft alone, readers are told, but now they may be shielded by the court as they try to negotiate that settlement. "There's no established rulebook to shape what comes next" in Puerto Rico, said a recent Bloomberg report, which described fights around the debt as "about to plunge into the unknown." There is much that is unclear about the way forward in Puerto Rico, but some things about how we got here are just not being much talked about. We're joined now to discuss the situation by Ed Morales, author and journalist and lecturer at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Ed Morales. Ed Morales: Hi. Thanks for having me. JJ: When we had you on the last time in 2015, in July, talking about Puerto Rico's debt crisis, you said that the moderate position is that Puerto Rico should be allowed to declare bankruptcy, but even if that happened, "there is still going to be a price paid by Puerto Rico." And you also noted at the time that the Puerto Rican government had its own committee looking at restructuring the debt, but that there was "noise from more right-wing Republicans, who want a US oversight committee that would take away a lot of the autonomy of Puerto Rico to determine its economic future." Well, that sounds a lot like where we're at about now. I can't imagine that you're surprised by the current situation.