Monday, August 29, 2016

Puerto Rico’s Collapse Foreshadows A Total U.S. Collapse

Congress, for some reason, has agreed to use U.S. Taxpayer money to bailout Puerto Rico. That’s mighty generous of Congress to use Citizens’ money for that, especially when most Congressmen have their money tax-sheltered in the Rothschild Trust Company in Reno. But it begs the question: Why is Puerto Rico even part of the United States?
An article in the Wall Street Journal reports that Puerto Rico’s pension fund is underfunded by $43 billion, which is on top of $70 billion in various forms of Government debt. Puerto Rico is an “unincorporated territory of the U.S., which means that it probably harbors a lot of U.S. money hiding from the IRS. That explains why Congress is using other people’s money to bailout their own money plus the money of those who fund Congressional seats.
Puerto Rico, for all intents and purposes, has financially collapsed. Your tax dollars are keeping it solvent and paying out pension beneficiaries. But the State of Illinois would love to have the size of PR’s problems. The State pension fund in Illinois is underfunded by over $111 billion. That’s based on a lot of assets like commercial real estate, junk bonds and private equity investments that are marked to fantasy. Mark ’em to market and I bet the pension fund is underfunded by closer to $200 billion.
That’s just Illinois. If we were to do a rigorous mark to market assessment of the State pension funds in California, Texas, New Jersey, New York and Florida, I’d bet my last roll of silver eagles that combined the pensions in those States – not including Illinois – are underfunded by over $1 trillion.
S&P 500 60 Min Intra Day
S&P 500 60 Min Intra Day
The graph above shows a 60-minute intra-day chart of theS&P 500 going back to late June. I’ve been featuring this chart in my Short Seller’s Journal every week. The S&P 500 has basically flat-lined since July 7. If you overlaid a bollinger-band® width indicator, it would show a horizontal line since July 7. The Fed has temporarily achieved the remarkable feat of removing volatility from the stock market.
The Fed has keyed the stock market to minimizing VaR. “VaR” stands for “Value at Risk.” It’s essentially a fancy-sounding term that measures how much an investment portfolio – or bank asset portfolio – might lose given certain volatility assumptions over time. That’s it in a nutshell though I’m sure quant-geeks will get picky with that summary.
But the bottom line is that if market volatility shoots up for some reason, VaR will shoot up and that will incinerate every single big bank and pension fund in this country. Puerto Rico’s predicament will look like a feel-good Broadway musical by comparison.
A friend of mine did a comprehensive of study of public pension funds and concluded that a 10% or more drop in the S&P 500 over a sustained period of time would induce the collapse of all public pension funds. I think he assumed the best case in terms of how pensions currently mark their assets. If you notice, the 10%-plus sell-offs last August and January were followed by sharp “V” bounces – both time. That was undoubtedly the work of the Fed and my friend’s quantitative work explains why.
I would be surprised if there’s ever been a 7-week period of time when the volatility in the stock market has been as low as it has been since July 7. Especially considering the high volume of economic, political and geopolitical events that are occurring simultaneously, each of which individually has caused sharp market sell-offs historically.
Another friend/colleague of mine told me today that one of clients stated that he thought the Fed could hold up the market forever. My response to that is, if that were the case the whole world would be speaking German right now.
The U.S. collapse will happen either now or later. For the latter outcome, at some point the Fed will need to print 10’s of trillions of dollars to prevent that horizontal line on the graph above from turning into a downward-pointing near-vertical line. Of course, please review the history of Germany circa 1923 to see how the money printing alternative worked out
By David I. KranzlerMarket Overview
Puerto Rico’s Collapse Foreshadows A Total U.S. Collapse

Will Lifting The Jones Act Save Puerto Rico?

In 2012, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported on the impact of the Jones Act on Puerto Rico, calling it a likely factor in the high cost of shipping to Puerto Rico, and a reason why port business there is down.
“It costs an estimated $3,063 to ship a twenty-foot container of household and commercial goods from the East Coast of the United States to Puerto Rico; the same shipment costs $1,504 to nearby Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) and $1,687 to Kingston (Jamaica)—destinations that are not subject to Jones Act restrictions,” the report claimed.
Nothing changed as a result, but four years later the subject is back in the Puerto Rico headlines now that U.S. Representative Gary Palmer (R-Alabama)has proposed a measure to exempt the island from the Jones Act.
The Palmer amendment to H.R. 5278, the Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), if passed, would allow foreign vessels to replace American ships and crews in the operation between the island and U.S. mainland. Palmer believes this would aid Puerto Rico’s struggling economy.
The Puerto Rico crisis is mostly one of Puerto Rico’s own making, but Congress is not blameless,” said Palmer in a statement on his website. “We do need to act, but in a way that frees Puerto Rico from economy stifling regulations to the maximum extent possible to allow them to rebuild their economy.”
An exemption, Palmer argues, would encourage business development. For instance, Puerto Rico’s power companies would be able to replace foreign-sourced oil with cheaper, cleaner, U.S.-sourced natural gas. And manufacturers in Puerto Rico would also no longer be at a cost disadvantage relative to Asia and other Latin American countries when shipping goods to the U.S.
That argument is popular among residents of Puerto Rico, as well as advocacy organizations like The Libre Initiative, a non-profit that “advances the values of economic freedom to empower the U.S. Hispanic community so it can thrive and contribute to a more prosperous America.”
Dan Garza, Executive Director for Libre, wrote a piece for the website Morning Consult that echoes many of Palmer’s concerns: “Puerto Ricans simply can’t have their goods delivered by trains or trucks. Rather, they rely on ships to bring most products to the island. As a result, any product that needs to be shipped to the island on a U.S. ship comes at a higher cost.”
The Jones Act is a typical case of the government picking winners and losers, and Puerto Rico is one of the hardest-hit losers of all,” Garza concludes. “If Puerto Rico is ever to regain its footing and enjoy a thriving economy, the first step the federal government must take is to drop the Jones Act.”
An Uphill Battle
Despite these urgings any changes are improbable, in part because nothing much at all is getting done in Congress at the moment, and in part because those with an opposing view on the issue wield significant influence on national policy.
Start with Matthew Paxton, President of the Shipbuilders Council of America, who expressed doubt that a change would have any positive impact. “Exempting Puerto Rico from the Jones Act would do nothing to address the island’s debt crisis and would actually jeopardize the more than $1 billion the U.S. maritime industry has invested in the Puerto Rican shipping trade, as well as the thousands of good-paying jobs on the island,” Paxton said in a statement.
He also chided Palmer for introducing the legislation, given Alabama’s prominent role in the shipyard industry—12,800 jobs and $953 million in GDP to the U.S. economy. “We are disappointed that Rep. Palmer seems to be more focused on political maneuvering than on protecting our nation’s domestic and economic security,” Paxton said.
Similar sentiments were expressed by the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO. “Exempting Puerto Rico from the Jones Act not only threatens our military sealift capabilities and thousands of domestic seafaring and shipbuilding jobs, but potentially further damages Puerto Rico’s already fragile economy,” said the organization’s president, Edward Wytkind, in a released statement. “This amendment could increase shipping rates for Puerto Rico, erode an important, dedicated Northbound route for exports and undermine ‘just in time’ delivery methods for goods traveling in both directions.”
Rep. Duncan Hunter, Chairman of the House Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee, is another opponent of any change, and expressed concern over potential “dire consequences” of exposing ports and waterways to “foreign seafarers.” That viewpoint would certainly be supported by the American shipping firms such as Crowley Maritime, that have enjoyed the luxury of reduced international competition for nearly 100 years.
But the most fervent protest to Palmer’s suggestion emerged from the American Maritime Partnership, one of the most prominent coalitions of the domestic maritime industry. The organization released a point-by-point rebuttal of every argument made by Palmer and others in favor of the status quo.
“The Jones Act is not a cause for the island’s financial woes,” said AMP Chairman Tom Allegretti. “While other industries have fled the island, the domestic maritime industry has made significant capital investments to service the economy and support thousands of family-wage jobs for Puerto Ricans.”
Given the shipping industry’s overwhelming support of The Jones Act, coupled with wide-ranging, bipartisan support in Congress, any alteration is unlikely to be ratified anytime soon.

The Jones Act doesn't govern shipments of export cargo and import cargo in international trade.
THE JONES ACT REQUIRES WATERBORNE CARGO BETWEEN TWO POINTS IN THE U.S. TO BE TRANSPORTED ON U.S. SHIPS: Defenders of the masure say repeal would jeopardize the investments the U.S. maritime industry has made in Puerto Rican shipping and trade.

Congressman Introduces Legislation to Exempt U.S. Territory

Will Lifting The Jones Act Save Puerto Rico?

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Puerto Rico’s $70 Billion Defaulted Debt Jumps to $113 Billion

With a Congressionally appointed federal control board about to take over Puerto Rico’s finances, the U.S. territory just admitted that its massively spiked public pension plan owes another $43 billion.

Designated by the United Nations as the “Oldest Colony in the World,” the U.S. territory defaulted on $70 billion in municipal bonds and $2 billion of interest on July 1. Unable to file for bankruptcy under federal Chapter 9 Municipal Bankruptcy Law, like the State of Arkansas did in 1933, Puerto Rico looked to the federal government for help.
The Obama Administration teamed with a bipartisan majority in Congress to pass”The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act” (PROMESA), which turned over the island’s finances to a federally appointed committee.
Breitbart News reported that the big motivation for taking over America’s worst welfare den was the fear of “1 Million Puerto Ricans Migrating to Mainland” if the hedge fund “Vulture Capitalist” investors who bought up the island’s bonds debt at about 30 cents on the dollar were able to use lawsuits to shake down the U.S. government for a bailout by jeopardizing the island’s ability to pay for schools, police officers and health care.
The legislation gave the control board de facto authority to sell government assets, consolidate agencies, and fire government workers in order to put the country’s books in order. It also retroactively put a stay on bondholder litigation.
One key reason Puerto Rico’s economy imploded was the Popular Democratic Party-controlled legislature making Spanish the official language for all schools and government use in 1991. As a result, 86 percent of the island does not speak English in the home and almost a third of the residents are on welfare. Poor language skills prevented relocating call-centers and other U.S. service businesses to Puerto Rico.
In the newest disaster for Puerto Rico, a recent audit revealed that the Puerto Rico Employees’ Retirement System and two smaller public pension plans only have about $1.8 billion in assets to pay $45 billion in pension liabilities. About one in 10 Puerto Ricans are either government public employees, retirees, or beneficiaries, according to the retirement system. But even more challenging, there are 120,169 retirees and beneficiaries, compared to just 118,780 public employees still working.
Rather than paying anything to the defaulted bondholders, Puerto Rico’s Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla increased the island’s annual cash contribution to the pension plans in July to $747.3 million, up from about $400 million in 2015.
The vulture capitalists holding Puerto Rico’s general-obligation debt immediately filed a lawsuit against the governor, claiming his administration was diverting cash for debt payments to pension contributions in violation of its Commonwealth’s Constitution.

Ted Hampton, a credit analyst with the New York offices of Moody’s Investors Service, told Bloomberg: “Everything is coming to a head on the pensions versus debt question and the oversight board will have to quickly take charge of this and try to determine how to prioritize and manage this situation in a way that’s consistent with the law.”
Puerto Rico’s $70 Billion Defaulted Debt Jumps to $113 Billion

Monday, August 22, 2016

University bondholders file suit against Puerto Rico

A lawsuit filed on behalf of University of Puerto Rico bondholders is asking a federal court to stop the commonwealth from diverting $89 million in tuition and fees that are pledged for bond payments.
It is the latest in a series of legal challenges filed against the Puerto Rican government since it began to restructure its nearly $70 billion in debt in 2014. Officials say they need to use the funds earmarked for bond payments to provide essential services instead amid a deep fiscal crisis.
The lawsuit filed Friday by bond trustee US Bank Trust National Association seeks relief from a new federal law that stays creditor lawsuits.
The University of Puerto Rico has $431.8 million in outstanding bonds and pays $42.6 million annually.
University bondholders file suit against Puerto Rico

How Monica Puig's Gold Medal Complicates The Argument for Puerto Rico's Statehood

One of the most surprising stories of the Olympics, which end on Sunday, was the unseeded Monica Puig's improbable march to the gold medal in women's singles tennis. Puig's win captured Puerto Rico's first-ever gold medal in the Olympics, and set off massive celebrations across the island. It was a big-ass deal.
Hold up, you might be thinking. Why does Puerto Rico have its own Olympic delegation? Aren't Puerto Ricans considered American citizens? The answers to those questions are layered and fascinating, as I learned when I sat down to talk with Antonio Sotomayor, a professor at the University of Illinois-Urbana. Sotomayor wrote the book The Sovereign Colony: Olympic Sport, National Identity, and International Politics in Puerto Rico. Sotomayor told me that the very, very complicated relationship between the U.S. mainland and the island territory with its long colonial history has always been the not-quite-subtext of Puerto Rico's international athletic endeavors. We talked about that history, the political importance of Puig's win, and Puerto Rico's shocking demolition of the U.S. powerhouse men's basketball team in 2004. An edited and condensed version of our conversation is below.
Gene Demby: So why does Puerto Rico — which is not a sovereign nation — even have an Olympic delegation? How did that come to be?
Antonio Sotomayor: That's, of course, a complicated topic. Puerto Rico has a sovereign Olympic delegation without political sovereignty, which goes back to the early 20th century. There are different reasons: diplomatic reasons involving the relationship between the U.S. and Latin America; the internal development of the Olympic movement and the Olympic Games needing delegations to participate in the games; and solidarity between Central American and Caribbean countries.
You have to move away from looking just at the Olympic Games — you have to look at the whole set of regional games that are part of the Olympic Movement. In the case of Puerto Rico, particularly, there's the Central American and Caribbean Games, one of those early regional games, which started in 1926. The first of those games were only held in Guatemala, Mexico and Cuba...
GD: Because they were the places that had the infrastructure for big sporting events.
AS: Right. This was brand new, and at a time when the Olympic movement was on exploratory, unstable ground or localized in Europe, and they were trying to expand. The organizers in Havana, Cuba, made an effort to go in ships to really invite delegations to participate.
GD: Was that a hard sell?
AS: Not really, because you had the growth of sport as a medium physical education, as a new medium of cultural progress and modernity, a whole set of ideas that sport symbolized the new 20th century. So it was easy to convince these countries to participate in this festival that was for international goodwill among countries.
And so in 1930, you have these countries agreeing to participate in the second edition of the [Central American and Caribbean Games, of CAC] and Puerto Rico received an invitation from the U.S. ambassador in Havana, Cuba, who said, well, the U.S. has a delegation in Puerto Rico, so we'll try to send that delegation. But it was for strategic purposes: in the 1930s, you have a shift in U.S. approach in the region from gunboat diplomacy to a "good neighbor policy."
GD: It's the "soft power" approach.
AS: Right. So they said: they're U.S. citizens, so I guess we can send them. So Puerto Rico attended the games, but carrying the U.S. flag.
GD: So there was this imposition of the literal banner of the United States on the Puerto Rican delegation.
AS: Not necessarily an imposition. Because for Puerto Ricans, having U.S. citizenship and an association with the U.S., like many Puerto Ricans today, was something they embraced willingly. They wanted to be recognized as Americans. Many Puerto Rican leaders were saying, "We will be representing the U.S at these games, but we will do it as Puerto Ricans."
And you have in the Olympic movement in general, but in Puerto Rico, as well, a movement of all these different ideologies and purposes. There were people who were very much in favor of the association with the U.S. and representing both countries. But you also had Puerto Rican nationalists. The actual flag-bearer for those [CAC] Games was a man named Juan Juarbe Juarbe. He was mainly track and field — and also a very good basketball player but [Puerto Rico] didn't have a basketball team at that time. But he was a Puerto Rican nationalist, and he carried the U.S. flag in the opening ceremonies.
So he came back to Puerto Rico, and he was recruited by Pedro Albizu Campos, the 20th-century liberation fighter — some people call him a martyr — an intellectual and fighter for Puerto Rican independence. Juan Juarbe Juarbe then became the nationalist party's foreign relations secretary and then traveled around the world claiming the right of Puerto Rico's independence.
So during the 1930s, you have that negotiation going on. And then in the 1935 [CAC] Games in El Salvador, the Puerto Ricans actually pulled out a Puerto Rican flag — which was not used back then as an official flag in Puerto Rico except by nationalists — and they used it in the opening procession as an act of nationalism. The purpose that the U.S. had for having Puerto Rico participate in the Central American Games, of having Puerto Rico at those games for diplomatic reasons, sometimes backfired. The U.S. strategy in sending was always [confronted by] the Puerto Rican impetus to show they were a different nation to some extent.
[Sotomayor said that after World War II, Europe's diminished imperials powers had a more tenuous grasp on their colonies. Caribbean countries that were moving toward independence — like Jamaica, notably — began participating in the 1948 Olympic Games as their own delegations.]
AS: The U.S. didn't want Puerto Ricans to participate in the 1948 Olympic Games as their own delegation. They came out of the world war strong, so they could just hold on tight. They wanted the Puerto Rican delegation to participate with the U.S. delegation, like Alaska and Hawaii did, in the 1948 games. But Avery Brundage, who was the head of U.S. Olympic Committee, understood the political context: how could the U.S. deny Puerto Ricans in the Olympic Games in 1948 when they just finished fighting for democracy, freedom and imperialism? And they were behaving like that empire, that was his arguments. He told them, we had to cancel the 1940 and 1944 Olympic Games [because of the war], we need more countries to participate. And because Jamaica and Puerto Rico had participated in the Central American Games, he said that they should let them to help the movement would be legitimized.
GD: So if this were happening today, Puerto Rico probably wouldn't exist as a discrete Olympic venture.
AS: Right. The Olympic movement doesn't need it. If Puerto Rico were to become a U.S. state, some people think it would keep its Olympic sovereignty. But the Olympic committee has said... no, if you elect to become part of a bigger country, we assume your Olympic committee would disappear.
GD: But those aren't necessarily the same impulses! Just because people make a political decision to align themselves with the United States as a state, in this case, doesn't mean they want to dissolve their Olympic presence.
AS: Many U.S. statehooders — that's what we call them — want to keep a Puerto Rican identity and follow the dream of the Founding Fathers that this was a union of sovereign states. And they want to carry that sentiment into possible statehood, including having an Olympic delegation. It also depends on how the U.S. admits this new territory and this stipulations. They could say, "we have this idea of one nation, one Olympic committee."
Monica Puig of Puerto Rico celebrates holding her country's flag after winning the gold medal match in the women's tennis competition — Puerto Rico's first-ever Olympic gold medal.i
Monica Puig of Puerto Rico celebrates holding her country's flag after winning the gold medal match in the women's tennis competition — Puerto Rico's first-ever Olympic gold medal.
Vadim Ghirda/AP
GD: Do Puerto Rican athletes have to think pragmatically about which team to play for in the Olympics? I'm thinking of Monica Puig. If she was on the U.S. team, she'd have to get around the Williams sisters — there's this logjam at the top of U.S. tennis. Is that a thing that people are navigating a lot?
AS: With all the sporting infrastructure, Recently, there was Gigi Fernandes, another tennis player, and she was pretty good. And then she switched her Olympic citizenship and played for the U.S. From what I read recently, she thought she had better infrastructure and opportunities. In another case, Carmelo Anthony [the New York Knicks and USA Basketball star] could play for Puerto Rico, and he identifies as Puerto Rican. In that team scenario, he has a better chance of winning a medal.
I'm working on a paper trying to understand Puerto Rico's political nationalists and their views on Puerto Rican Olympic sovereignty and national identity. There's a sense of patriotism in Puerto Rico that has to be taken into into consideration. Many athletes, that sense is really strong, and if they could participate, many of them would play for Puerto Rico, even if they could play for the U.S. But then again, there are very few cases. And Monica, got her gold medal in a very important sport...
GD: Why is tennis so particularly important?
AS: It's very popular, it's one of the sports that gets a good audience, at least in the developed North Atlantic — the U.S. and Europe. And to win a gold medal in a sport that's highly associated with the English aristocracy...[players] have to dress in white at Wimbledon. And for someone from this small island to win in this protected space ... protected literally, like, don't speak during the serve, don't say anything, if you want to scream and shout, go to a [soccer] game! When you put it into the context of the struggle of this island that has been living under a colonial relationship for more than 500 years, the only cultural medium in which they are recognized by the international community as a sovereign nation, any medal is important. But the gold, visually, puts you at the top of the podium, and you play the anthem — it's the only anthem played. On multiple levels, winning a gold in that sport is extraordinary, and Puerto Ricans understand it.
I think Monica Puig said in multiple interviews, winning the WTA tournament is my job. But putting on the Puerto Rican jersey is special, is for the glory of Puerto Rico.
GD: Right. Puig "feels the shirt."
AS: And this is why the politics and the Olympic movement cannot be separated. Because you have that victory for Monica Puig, you have a whole nation united. For two days, Saturday and Sunday, there were no murders in a place that averages two or three murders a day. The superintendent came out and said, "We didn't have any murders and I think it's because of Monica Puig's victory."
My mother, who is still on the island, said there was a priest who stopped Mass to watch the match and put his microphone to his cellphone and everyone listened and cheered. There was a whole party. And then he said, Okay, now let's resume Mass. [laughs]
Fans cheer during the final round match between Monica Puig of Puerto Rico and Angelique Kerber of Germany at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Fans cheer during the final round match between Monica Puig of Puerto Rico and Angelique Kerber of Germany at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Charles Krupa/AP
GD: [laughs] That's amazing.
AS: It's incredible. And that all happened in celebration of the Puerto Rican nation. Monica Puig's victory and a victory of this imagined community called Puerto Ricans. For the pro-statehood movement, who want to assimilate into the U.S. culture, it's a thing they have to deal with. In and of itself, that victory, that nationalistic feeling is an impediment to Puerto Rico's assimilation. Even if you say, let's separate it from politics, the existence of Puerto Rico's Olympic committee is a political brick wall for the pro-statehood movement.
GD: Before I go, can we talk about that 2004 men's basketball game? [In the 2004 Olympics, Puerto Rico shocked the basketball world by beating the American team, comprised of NBA stars, by 19 points in the group stages. — Ed.] It's still so ridiculous. You have a team with LeBron James and Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson...
GD and AS: [in unison] Dwyane Wade...
AS: Big names. The biggest.
GD: ...and they get stomped by Puerto Rico.
AS: Yeah. Puerto Rico has had a good basketball program since the 1950s. We've had very good basketball players. To me, the decade of the 1990s, was the best decade of Puerto Rican basketball, perhaps because it was my era...
Puerto Rico's shocking upset of the United States men's basketball team in the 2004 Olympics was layered with political subtext. "It meant a lot — not only because of the sport, but because they did it to the U.S.," said Antonio Sotomayor, a professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies.
Puerto Rico's shocking upset of the United States men's basketball team in the 2004 Olympics was layered with political subtext. "It meant a lot — not only because of the sport, but because they did it to the U.S.," said Antonio Sotomayor, a professor of Latin American and Caribbean studies.
MICHAEL CONROY/AP
GD: Did you play?
AS: I did but I was not good at all. But I loved it. I loved it.
GD: Man. Same here.
AS: And then you have that generation of the 1990s player, that was starting to retire. For some reason, that game, they gave them their best, and the U.S. with their big names, had grown used to just rolling over teams internationally. And the Puerto Ricans got the best of them and just beat them. For Puerto Rico, it was very special — very similar to what we're seeing now with Monica Puig. Back then, the U.S. was the Dream Team ... they had been beating other countries by 30 or 40 — good for them, but horrible for the rest of the world. And then you have this small island having to get enough players to beat this dream team — they ended up winning by 19 but they were winning by 24 at different points.
GD: They were way up.
AS: For Puerto Ricans, that whole historical context of an island that's been under colonial rule, without political voice or face to the world, beating the most popular team in the world in one of the most popular sports, was extraordinary. And it meant a lot — not only because of the sport, but because they did it to the U.S.
GD: Right.
AS: The metropole. The country that has control over this other island. The symbolism is very strong. And to contextualize it, it becomes more than just winning a game. For many, beating the U.S. at that game at the particular moment in time could have been better than winning a medal. Sure, they would have taken the gold — they would have celebrated! But the historical meaning, for the nation, was just extraordinary.
GD: I remember seeing — well, not the highlights, because NBC didn't share the video with other networks — but the photo stills from that game, and listening to the commentary. And I could not wrap my mind around the fact that it happened. Puerto Rico is an island of 3 million people...
AS: It's going down, definitely. We had 4 million people but now we're down to 3.4 over the last decade. Half a million at least have fled the island.
I think, If I had to write the book today, I would start with Monica Puig instead of the Dream Team. Not necessarily for the sporting part of it — Monica would have had to defeat her opponent in straight sets, 6-0, 6-0 to equate the level of humiliation they gave to the Dream Team. No, no, no — it's not about the score. It's about the context, the historical and current political context in which Monica Puig's victory sits in today — the multilayered crisis in Puerto Rico. Monica won gold in an equally important sport — probably more — because tennis is one of the sports of England, one of the cradles of the modern Olympic movement. Pierre de Coubertin [the founder of the International Olympic Committee] was French, but he was an Anglophile. And he went to England to get inspired to revive the Olympic Games. And for Monica to beat a German, a Czech, all of these great nations in terms of their sporting conditions, it's a tremendous deal. More than that 2004 basketball game, I would say.

Puerto Rico's Monica Puig reacts after winning her women's singles final tennis match against Germany's Angelique Kerber at the Olympic Tennis Centre of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro on August 13, 2016.


How Monica Puig's Gold Medal Complicates The Argument for Puerto Rico's Statehood