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Puerto Rico And The Netherworld Of Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Mitu Gulati, Robert K. Rasmussen
Puerto Rico And The Netherworld Of Sovereign Debt Restructuring, Mitu Gulati, Robert K. Rasmussen
Faculty Scholarship
Puerto Rico has incurred debt well beyond its ability to repay. It attempted to address its fiscal woes through legislation allowing the restructuring of some its debt. The Supreme Court put a stop to this effort, holding that Congress in the Bankruptcy Code barred the Commonwealth from enacting its own restructuring regime. Yet all agreed that the Bankruptcy Code did not provide anything in its place. While Congress quickly enacted PROMESA in an attempt to address the Puerto Rico’s fiscal ills, we explore in this paper whether Congress has the power to bar Puerto Rico from enacting a restructuring mechanism …
Rollover Risk: Ideating A U.S. Debt Default, Steven L. Schwarcz
Rollover Risk: Ideating A U.S. Debt Default, Steven L. Schwarcz
Faculty Scholarship
This article examines how a U.S. debt default might occur, how it could be avoided, its potential consequences if not avoided, and how those consequences could be mitigated. To that end, the article differentiates defaults caused by insolvency from defaults caused by illiquidity. The latter, which are potentiated by rollover risk (the risk that the government will be temporarily unable to borrow sufficient funds to repay its maturing debt), are not only plausible but have occurred in the past. Moreover, the ongoing controversy over the federal debt ceiling and the rise of the shadow-banking system make these types of defaults …