Just when muni traders thought they could enjoy the tax-exempt market’s tremendous performance to date and just focus on World Cup drama, Puerto Rico is once again making the headlines. Earlier this week, the Governor and his staff made an about-face and threw their support behind a proposed law to restructure PR’s public corporations. At this writing, the proposed law was reportedly passed by the PR House at midnight on Wednesday night.
Month: June 2014
State Universities Increase Reliance – and Price Tag – on Tuition
By Richard Ciccarone In a few months, the class of 2018 will matriculate at colleges and universities around the country. The four years of classes, football games and extracurricular activities will pass quickly; upon graduation, these students will be faced with...
Municipals at Another Interesting Juncture
As we head into the mid-year mark, the municipal market has once again proven its resilience with a head-turning rebound coming on the heels of a disastrous 2013. Year-to-date through June 17, the S&P National AMT-Free Municipal Index is up an impressive 5.32%,...
5 Interactive Maps and the Questions They Answer
by Mardee Handler Dating back to the early explorers, maps were tools used to help uncover buried treasures... Now, many maps have become treasures in their own right. If a picture is worth a thousand words, an interactive map can often encapsulate an entire story,...
Puerto Rico Scrambles to Plug Budget Hole as Unions Flex Their Muscles
Do ratings on Puerto Rico issuers matter anymore at this stage? Yesterday, Fitch downgraded PREPA one notch to “BB” while keeping the issuer on negative watch. Certainly, for an entity that’s widely viewed as a restructuring candidate (and one that actually ran out of...
Puerto Rico: The View from the Ground
Given the disappointing downturn in Puerto Rico’s April Economic Indicators after several months of relative stability, we decided it was time we made it down to the Island and observed for ourselves what the real situation is on the ground. After all, there’s only so...