Puerto Rico Leads the Way...

Ratings company Moody's on Tuesday slashed Puerto Rico's debt rating by three notches into even deeper junk status after the US territory passed a debt-restructuring law.

Moody's Investors Service cut the rating to "B2" from "Ba2" and said the outlook was negative, indicating further downgrades were possible.

Now dubbed the "Greece of the Caribbean," the island is, like Greece, reeling under massive debt.

Over the past decade, the commonwealth's debt has doubled to nearly $70 billion and investors are growing increasingly worried the government is running out of cash.

In a bid for debt relief, the Puerto Rican authorities recently adopted a law that allows for the restructuring of part of its debt by allowing public corporations to defer or reduce payments on outstanding payments, to the detriment of creditors.
http://www.france24.com/en/20140701-moodys-pushes-puerto-rico-debt-deep-junk-status/

WHL wrote:Isn't that also why they want to become a state?  So we can bail them out?

It all started about a year ago when I began noticing more homeless men in the Chicago neighborhood where I work. Back of the Yards is a community that faces some of the city’s toughest problems: joblessness, crime, drug use.

Many of these men would be sitting in doorways or shuffling along, many times asking for money.

One day, I asked one of them: “Where are you from?” He told me a story that I later heard again and again and again.

The men told me they were from Puerto Rico. They were addicted to heroin and they ended up in Chicago because someone in Puerto Rico drove them to the airport and put them on a plane with a one-way ticket to Chicago.
WBEZ