Puerto Rico is scrambling to meet the deadline of midnight tonight—4 January—to make a US$1 billion payment on its US$72 billion national debt. It is unlikely to be able to do so, setting the stage for a US$72 billion default. This is looming as the first financial shock of 2016, and coincides with the knock-on effect of December’s US interest rate rise, the run of bank collapses in Italy, depositor “bail-in” officially coming into effect across the EU as of 1 January, and the expected defaults on potentially trillions of dollars’ worth of junk bonds in the resources sector. All of this underscores the extreme urgency of a full Glass-Steagall separation of real banking from financial speculation, so that everyday citizens and daily economic functions can be protected from the fast-approaching global financial meltdown.
www.cecaust.com.au
Toms Blog on Life and Livingness