Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 34,325
Likes: 740
O
OCD Offline OP
Legend
OP Offline
Legend
O
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 34,325
Likes: 740
PUERTO RICO’S $123 BILLION BANKRUPTCY IS THE COST OF U.S. COLONIALISM

Juan González
May 9 2017, 9:23 a.m.


LAST WEEK Puerto Rico officially became the largest bankruptcy case in the history of the American public bond market. On May 3, a fiscal control board imposed on the island’s government by Washington less than year ago suddenly announced that the Puerto Rico’s economic crisis “has reached a breaking point.” The board asked for the immediate appointment of a federal judge to decide how to deal with a staggering $123 billion debt the commonwealth government and its public corporations owe to both bondholders and public employee pension systems.

The announcement sparked renewed press attention to a Caribbean territory that many have dubbed America’s Greece. The island’s total debt, according to the control board, is unprecedented for any government insolvency in the U.S., and it is certain to mushroom quickly if no action is taken. Detroit’s bankruptcy, by comparison, involved just $18 billion — one-ninth the size of Puerto Rico’s.

Within days, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, acting under a provision of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (known as PROMESA), which was enacted last June, appointed federal judge Laura Taylor Swain from the southern district of New York to take over the Puerto Rico case. A former bankruptcy court judge who was appointed to the federal court by President Clinton, Swain famously presided over the long criminal trial of employees of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.

Few press reports on Puerto Rico’s troubles, however, have bothered to examine the deeper issues behind this crisis.

First, the colonial relationship that has prevailed between the U.S. and Puerto Rico since 1898 is no longer viable. Puerto Rico is the largest overseas territory still under the sovereign control of the United States, and it is the most important colonial possession in this nation’s history. That relationship produced uncommon profits for American subsidiaries on the island for more than a century, even as the federal government kept claiming that the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, created in 1952, was a self-governing territory. But now, with a Washington-appointed board directly overseeing the island’s economy, and with a pivotal Supreme Court decision last year affirming that Congress continues to exercise sovereign power over Puerto Rico, the mask of self-governance has been removed.

The old commonwealth is effectively dead. Absent a huge infusion of U.S. public dollars to prop up its collapsing economy, a scenario that is nearly impossible with a Trump White House and a Republican-controlled Congress, that relationship cannot be revived. Political leaders in both Washington and San Juan, whether they like it or not, are being propelled to fashion a new political and economic status for the territory. They will have to finally decide whether to completely annex Puerto Rico as the 51st state or acknowledge that it still remains a distinct nation, with the right its own sovereignty and independence.

Second, the impact of Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy will continue to reverberate throughout the U.S. bond market, far more than most Wall Street analysts have so far acknowledged. The PROMESA control board has warned that even with massive cuts to government services and new projected revenues from higher taxes and fees, Puerto Rico will still generate slightly less than $8 billion in budget surpluses over the next ten years, when some $35 billion in debt service comes due. In other words, three-quarters of the debt cannot be repaid. That is not just a haircut for bondholders; it is a head-shaving, one that will send shock waves throughout the municipal bond market. After all, bonds backed by the full faith-and-credit of local government entities have long been considered among the safest of investments.

Years of court battles between Puerto Rico and contending groups of creditors are now certain. “The economy of Puerto Rico will be put on hold for years,” Andrew Rosenberg, adviser to the Ad Hoc Group of Puerto Rico General Obligation Bondholders, told the Associated Press. “Make no mistake: The board has chosen to turn Puerto Rico into the next Argentina.”

The Debt Is Not Payable

Civil society groups contend that the plunder of the Puerto Rican people through predatory and even illegal bond deals that island politicians concocted together with top Wall Street firms will now be exposed.

Amazingly, the 23-page petition that the federal government’s own financial control board filed in U.S. District Court in San Juan reached the exact same conclusion that Puerto Rico’s former governor Alejandro García Padilla reached back in June 2015 — that the island’s debt is “not payable.”

In the nearly two years since García Padilla sounded the alarm, however, Washington has done almost nothing to alleviate the economic catastrophe afflicting 3.4 million U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico, except to establish the control board by enacting PROMESA.

On an island that has lost 10 percent of its population in the last ten years, where 46 percent of the population lives below the U.S. poverty level, where the unemployment rate is more than 11 percent, and where the labor force participation hovers around 40 percent, lawmakers in Congress have kept insisting on greater austerity from Puerto Rico’s population. The reality is such dire conditions would never be tolerated among U.S. citizens in any other jurisdiction, yet they are allowed to persist in Puerto Rico.

During the past two years, the commonwealth government has sharply raised electricity and water rates. It has increased the sales tax (now a value added tax) to 11.5 percent. It has proposed ending all pensions for new workers and cutting existing benefits by an average of 10 percent. And last week, it announced the closing of 179 public schools for the coming school year. In addition, the control board has called for a $450 million cut over the next four years to the island’s 70,000-student public university.

Under the control board’s pressure, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, who took office in January, is eyeing the privatization of the government-owned electric company, of the water and sewer authority, even of the public transit system. But even massive cuts and selling off public assets can’t solve the problem that there aren’t enough jobs on the island, that young people keep fleeing to the United States, and that Puerto Rico’s government is powerless to fashion its own economic and trade policy independently from the U.S.

For decades, Puerto Rico was important to the American economy as a center of sugar cane growing, then as a tax haven for manufacturing and pharmaceutical companies, and as a military stronghold and bulwark against the spread of communism in Latin America. But now it is no longer needed for any of these things. Most of the U.S. military bases have closed, and Congress began in 1996 to phase out the island’s tax haven status. As soon as the last of the federal tax breaks — known as Section 936 — ended in 2006, corporations started leaving and the island plunged into a recession from which it has yet to recover. For the past 20 years, a succession of island governments has been closing structural operating deficits with borrowed funds supplied by Wall Street firms eager to market its triple tax-exempt bonds to wealthy and middle-class Americans and Puerto Ricans.

Investors were especially drawn to a provision of the Puerto Rico constitution that required the government to pay general obligation debt service ahead of any other expenses, and by the fact that Puerto Rico and its public corporations were legally prevented from resorting to Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the portion of the bankruptcy code that applies to most local governments and municipalities.

Until 1978, Congress had included all the territories and possessions of the United States under Chapter 9, so Puerto Rico had bankruptcy protection until then. But between ’78 and the early ’80s, there were several changes to U.S. bankruptcy law. In 1984, an amendment was inserted into the law by South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond that specifically excluded Puerto Rico from Chapter 9. No reason was given. No federal policy or interest in the change was spelled out in the amendment process. By a few simple phrases in an amendment that few people noticed, Congress laid the basis for the unique situation Puerto Rico confronted last year. It was not only broke, there was no established legal recourse for it to get a court to decide how its many creditors would get paid or how much.

The PROMESA bill Congress enacted at least created a new type of Chapter 9-like process for the island. The bill stipulates that if the Puerto Rican government and the control board cannot reach voluntary settlements with bondholders, a judge can be appointed and creditors forced to accept a settlement, known as a “cram-down.”

But the law’s constitutionality has yet to be tested, and with so much money at stake the various groups of bondholders are determined to wage a titanic legal battle against it.

On May 5, for instance, Ambac Assurance Corp, one of the major insurers of Puerto Rico bonds, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Puerto Rico against the Commonwealth and the Oversight Board, and did so with uncommonly strident language:

Sovereignty confers great power, but it does not authorize lawlessness. This action seeks to halt the latest in a series of unconstitutional and unlawful acts that have been the unfortunate modus operandi of the Commonwealth government in seeking to manage its financial and economic distress. Instead of rectifying these abuses, the Oversight Board created by Congress to restore fiscal responsibility to the Commonwealth has affirmatively exacerbated them, giving its imprimatur to an ongoing scheme of constitutional and statutory violations that can only be called theft.

Ambac has insured billions of dollars in sales tax revenue bonds, known as COFINA bonds, that Puerto Rico has issued since 2006, and the company, along with other bond insures, faces enormous losses from any cram-down.

Meanwhile another group of bondholders who were involved in $1.4 billion of Puerto Rico’s last major general obligation bonds, issued in 2014, filed suit in New York State Supreme Court. Those bondholders, led by hedge funds Aurelius Capital Management and Monarch Alternative Capital, insist that Puerto Rico’s Constitution requires them to be paid first from all available revenues. The general obligation bondholder group, along with many civil society groups, insist that all the COFINA bonds — and they represent nearly $18 billion of the total $74 billion bond debt — were illegally issued and should not be repaid.

That’s because the Puerto Rico constitution specifically forbids debt service and principal that surpasses more than 15 percent of annual government revenues. The Puerto Rico legislature specifically created COFINA to maneuver around that 15 percent limit, and it then guaranteed the payment of that debt from sales tax revenues. But the legality of that maneuver has never been tested in court.

While the contending bondholder groups battle in the courts, the PROMESA board has now sided with the Puerto Rico government that bondholders will have to accept major reductions in payments.

“From current revenues, the Commonwealth and its instrumentalities cannot satisfy their collective $74 billion debt burden and $49 billion pension burden and pay their operating expenses,” the fiscal control board concluded last week after months of poring over Puerto Rico financial records.

And the island’s budgetary crisis “is about to worsen exponentially,” the control board warned, “due to the elimination of approximately $850 million in Affordable Care Act Funds in fiscal year 2018.” The total loss of federal health care funds, according to the board, is expected to reach $16 billion over the next ten years. On top of that, the government pension systems are almost out of cash and will need $1.5 billion a year just to keep up payments to current retirees. Unlike municipal workers in the U.S., most public employees in Puerto Rico are not part of the social security system, so those pensions are their only retirement income.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump and Republican leaders in Congress insist there will be no bailout of Puerto Rico, no extra federal assistance to the island’s population.

They want to ignore the fact that back in the 1990s under Bill Clinton and the New Gingrich Congress, Washington’s leaders realized they had to take drastic measures to save the District of Columbia from economic collapse. Congress established a fiscal control board just as it has with Puerto Rico.

But that board soon concluded that DC had structural problems that required federal help. In 1997, a reform package accomplished the following: the federal government assumed the city’s debts, it took responsibility for the local courts and prisons, it increased the rate for Medicaid reimbursements to the district, and it took over the city’s underfunded employee pensions.

As a result, the district emerged from economic calamity. Today it is a vibrant and prosperous city.

Federal lawmakers will either have to provide massive assistance to Puerto Rico, or they will have to move rapidly to change the island’s political and economic status. After a century of colonial rule by Washington and decades of predatory debt from Wall Street, the bill has come due.

https://theintercept.com/2017/05/09/puer...-s-colonialism/

Trump will fix it... rolleyes

Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 34,325
Likes: 740
O
OCD Offline OP
Legend
OP Offline
Legend
O
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 34,325
Likes: 740
As soon as they get rid of the natives, this will be the next big gentrification opportunity. The rich will get to take over a beautiful island for pennies on the dollar. I think this has been the goal all along.

Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 52,403
Likes: 855
Legend
Offline
Legend
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 52,403
Likes: 855
The rich already control it though.

It really sucks how PR gets treated by D.C. Throughout the years. Good enough to have a military base, good enough to let PR's join the military, good enough to wealthy Americans own the country.

Not good enough to be treated like actual citizens that they are.


“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

- Theodore Roosevelt
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 3,044
K
Hall of Famer
Offline
Hall of Famer
K
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 3,044
Take heed and note.

this will be the USa in the next decade or so. We are right now 19 Trillion Dollars in debt(This doesn't NOT count all the benefits like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc benefit the government has promised to pay Americans)

This is what Happens when you have a succession of HORRIBLE Preisdents (Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr,, Obama, and Now Trump) these people have spent us into Oblivion, Kids in the USA have no future at all except a lower standard of living, they will be much poorer then their parents were, far more in debt then their parents were, with terrible health care.

Every kid born on the last day of Obama's reign as President owes the government 160,000 dollars the second they took their first breath, and Trump proposed budget increases those numbers even more.

They have spent us into debt so badly its an untenable unescapable quagmire...most Americans just don't realize how pegged they actually are....in a few years it will become very apparent I assure you...the Student Loan buddle is the next big bubble to crash, and the Housing Market is being propped up by Federal Reserve dollars(debt) that can't be sustained forever...that property isn't worth that much....god what a mess.

the economic collapse that's coming will be the biggest in history....folks are going know how my grandma felt during the Great Depression of 20's....you won't even be able to afford to have a cellphone, let alone have anyone to talk to with it because everyone will be out of work, broke, or both...

Joined: Jan 2007
Posts: 6,331
Hall of Famer
Offline
Hall of Famer
Joined: Jan 2007
Posts: 6,331
Quote:
this will be the USa in the next decade or so. We are right now 19 Trillion Dollars in debt(This doesn't NOT count all the benefits like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc benefit the government has promised to pay Americans)

This is what Happens when you have a succession of HORRIBLE Preisdents (Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr,, Obama, and Now Trump) these people have spent us into Oblivion, Kids in the USA have no future at all except a lower standard of living, they will be much poorer then their parents were, far more in debt then their parents were, with terrible health care.


The one thing that makes me feel safer is the stability of the US Dollar. Most of the debt we owe to ourselves, and the US Dollar is the strongest currency of the world at this point. A strong dollar is what protects us. That and the need of lending countries to have us buy their exports.

While the dollar is not the most valuable, it is what woudl be considered "Stable" and that's why you go anywhere in the Americas, and they'll take your dollar as easy as their own money.

19 trillion is quite ridiculous though. Reforms need to come. Unfortunately, anytime anyone speaks of these reforms, they lose their chance of getting elected. Instead, we as Americans, prefer to live the jaded life


UCONN HUSKIES 2014 Champions of Basketball
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 42,794
Likes: 158
Legend
Offline
Legend
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 42,794
Likes: 158
This might be a stupid question, but why hasn't PR become a State?


#GMSTRONG

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
Daniel Patrick Moynahan

"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe."
Damanshot
Joined: Mar 2007
Posts: 187
B
Practice Squad
Offline
Practice Squad
B
Joined: Mar 2007
Posts: 187
Originally Posted By: PeteyDangerous
19 trillion is quite ridiculous though.


Time to call Dave Ramsey.

Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 34,325
Likes: 740
O
OCD Offline OP
Legend
OP Offline
Legend
O
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 34,325
Likes: 740
Originally Posted By: Knight_Of_Brown
Take heed and note.

this will be the USa in the next decade or so. We are right now 19 Trillion Dollars in debt(This doesn't NOT count all the benefits like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc benefit the government has promised to pay Americans)

This is what Happens when you have a succession of HORRIBLE Preisdents (Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr,, Obama, and Now Trump) these people have spent us into Oblivion, Kids in the USA have no future at all except a lower standard of living, they will be much poorer then their parents were, far more in debt then their parents were, with terrible health care.

Every kid born on the last day of Obama's reign as President owes the government 160,000 dollars the second they took their first breath, and Trump proposed budget increases those numbers even more.

They have spent us into debt so badly its an untenable unescapable quagmire...most Americans just don't realize how pegged they actually are....in a few years it will become very apparent I assure you...the Student Loan buddle is the next big bubble to crash, and the Housing Market is being propped up by Federal Reserve dollars(debt) that can't be sustained forever...that property isn't worth that much....god what a mess.

the economic collapse that's coming will be the biggest in history....folks are going know how my grandma felt during the Great Depression of 20's....you won't even be able to afford to have a cellphone, let alone have anyone to talk to with it because everyone will be out of work, broke, or both...


So here is the thing about this line of thought... WRONG.

The US can print limitless amounts of money. We have a sovereign fiat currency. This threat of debt crisis is just a way to justify austerity measures. Read the articles below to enlighten yourself.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemman...r/#2a8625e62a86


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity

Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 30,815
Likes: 515
A
Legend
Offline
Legend
A
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 30,815
Likes: 515
Any, ANY country can print limitless amounts of money.

That doesn't mean anything other than: they can print limitless amounts of money.

When you start to have serious problems is when that money has no value to other countries. The more there is of something, the less it's worth - dollars included.

This country is in a world of hurt, financially, and we just keep spending,spending,spending.

Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 18,204
C
~
Legend
Offline
~
Legend
C
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 18,204
And not on the right stuff too. It's fine to have public debt, but when it's due to things like SS then it gets extremely complicated. Also having no infrastructure plan or growth plan for the future will only have us fall behind China in two decades.

Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 30,815
Likes: 515
A
Legend
Offline
Legend
A
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 30,815
Likes: 515
Agreed.

Some say public debt is different than private debt. Perhaps, in some situations, it is. In many ways, it's similar.

I had to go into debt to buy my house. I could afford my house, but not all at once. I went into debt, and I'm paying it off, every month.

My initial debt was big, and it gets smaller, and smaller.

Take the country. It's the opposite. Seems like every year congress raises the debt limit. Congress "borrows" from itself (us) every year. As interest ONLY payments go up, the gov't. reduces it's ability to pay any principal on the debt.

If/when other countries devalue our dollar, it won't matter how much money we print - worthless is worthless.

Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 8,870
Likes: 429
P
Hall of Famer
Offline
Hall of Famer
P
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 8,870
Likes: 429
Originally Posted By: CHSDawg
Also having no infrastructure plan or growth plan for the future will only have us fall behind China in two decades.


What do you mean?! First we're going to go back to the mines for coal. Then maybe it'll inspire us back to steam engine trains... In no time I bet we can be the world leader in building sternwheeler boats. It's the GOP plan of moving forward by going back.


[Linked Image]
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 34,325
Likes: 740
O
OCD Offline OP
Legend
OP Offline
Legend
O
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 34,325
Likes: 740
Originally Posted By: archbolddawg
Any, ANY country can print limitless amounts of money.

That doesn't mean anything other than: they can print limitless amounts of money.

When you start to have serious problems is when that money has no value to other countries. The more there is of something, the less it's worth - dollars included.

This country is in a world of hurt, financially, and we just keep spending,spending,spending.



Greece does not have a currency to print. If it's traded for in US dollars our government can buy it by printing money, period. The debt is fictitious in this way.

Now printing money does have unintended consequences such as inflation, devalued currency, and and often a declining GDP. BUT, we can't go broke and collapse over debt, it's not possible.

Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 30,815
Likes: 515
A
Legend
Offline
Legend
A
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 30,815
Likes: 515
I disagree.

Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 18,204
C
~
Legend
Offline
~
Legend
C
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 18,204
Of course it is. Especially when your public debt is grown through robbing the people of their entitlements. I can't think of anyone I know under 40 who thinks they'll ever cash a social security check. They just won't have the money.

Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 1,391
Dawg Talker
Offline
Dawg Talker
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 1,391
Originally Posted By: Knight_Of_Brown
Take heed and note.

this will be the USa in the next decade or so. We are right now 19 Trillion Dollars in debt(This doesn't NOT count all the benefits like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc benefit the government has promised to pay Americans)

This is what Happens when you have a succession of HORRIBLE Preisdents (Bush Sr, Clinton, Bush Jr,, Obama, and Now Trump) these people have spent us into Oblivion, Kids in the USA have no future at all except a lower standard of living, they will be much poorer then their parents were, far more in debt then their parents were, with terrible health care.

Every kid born on the last day of Obama's reign as President owes the government 160,000 dollars the second they took their first breath, and Trump proposed budget increases those numbers even more.

They have spent us into debt so badly its an untenable unescapable quagmire...most Americans just don't realize how pegged they actually are....in a few years it will become very apparent I assure you...the Student Loan buddle is the next big bubble to crash, and the Housing Market is being propped up by Federal Reserve dollars(debt) that can't be sustained forever...that property isn't worth that much....god what a mess.

the economic collapse that's coming will be the biggest in history....folks are going know how my grandma felt during the Great Depression of 20's....you won't even be able to afford to have a cellphone, let alone have anyone to talk to with it because everyone will be out of work, broke, or both...


Just throwing this out there but weren't people saying the exact same things when the National Debt Clock went above 500 Billion or crossed 1 Trillion in the 80s?

Wasn't my generation (gen x) supposed to be dead broke with a massive amount owned to the debt?

I'm not saying to disregard what you are saying. The debt is troublesome. I just don't think it's as dire as some make it out to be.


------------------------------
*In Baker we trust*
-------------------------------
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 52,403
Likes: 855
Legend
Offline
Legend
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 52,403
Likes: 855
Originally Posted By: CHSDawg
Of course it is. Especially when your public debt is grown through robbing the people of their entitlements. I can't think of anyone I know under 40 who thinks they'll ever cash a social security check. They just won't have the money.


really hope they reform that before me and you retire, bro.


“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

- Theodore Roosevelt
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 18,204
C
~
Legend
Offline
~
Legend
C
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 18,204
Originally Posted By: Swish
Originally Posted By: CHSDawg
Of course it is. Especially when your public debt is grown through robbing the people of their entitlements. I can't think of anyone I know under 40 who thinks they'll ever cash a social security check. They just won't have the money.


really hope they reform that before me and you retire, bro.


The way modern medicine is, do you really think the retirement age is going to be set under 90? Maybe in 60-70 years they'll have enough money for our SS and Medicaid.

Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 52,403
Likes: 855
Legend
Offline
Legend
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 52,403
Likes: 855
it will probably be around 77-80 by the time we're there.

I turn 30 this year so that gives them roughly 50 years to figure it out before it's time for me to chill.

people younger than us are gonna get the majority of benefits from modern medicine.

of course....that's dependent on how screwed up or good our healthcare coverage is.


“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

- Theodore Roosevelt
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 28,149
Likes: 833
Legend
Offline
Legend
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 28,149
Likes: 833
Originally Posted By: Damanshot
This might be a stupid question, but why hasn't PR become a State?



You'd be better off just Google'ing that.... it's a pretty deep topic.


Browns is the Browns

... there goes Joe Thomas, the best there ever was in this game.

Joined: Jul 2014
Posts: 7,612
R
Hall of Famer
Offline
Hall of Famer
R
Joined: Jul 2014
Posts: 7,612
We (The U.S.) ruined Puerto Rico.

I can’t see it being a productive, happy, independent island anytime into the foreseeable future.

Puerto Rico should be one of the best places on earth.

Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 34,325
Likes: 740
O
OCD Offline OP
Legend
OP Offline
Legend
O
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 34,325
Likes: 740
Originally Posted By: rockyhilldawg
We (The U.S.) ruined Puerto Rico.

I can’t see it being a productive, happy, independent island anytime into the foreseeable future.

Puerto Rico should be one of the best places on earth.



I look for it to be a haven for the wealthy in the next 10-15 years. The property will be very cheap and ripe for gentrification now. I think stealing the island from the natives is what this was all about.

Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 18,204
C
~
Legend
Offline
~
Legend
C
Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 18,204
I'm game for whatever gets hipsters out of Williamsburgh and whatever can get Nuyoricans into places like Bushwick and the lower east side. I hate going to NYC now. Can't go to a house party unless you bring your own la croix. 90's rap made me think NYC was going to be a lot cooler.

DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus PUERTO RICO’S $123 BILLION BANKRUPTCY IS THE COST OF U.S. COLONIALISM

Link Copied to Clipboard
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5