New York Times (April 17)
“If one country defaults on its loans, it’s a big problem for its citizens. If a dozen countries default, it’s a big problem for the world.” Nearing the “verge of yet another debt crisis,” world leaders can still act to prevent it. “They should dust off the tool kit that helped end the Latin American debt crisis, especially the measures that convinced creditors to share the pain and accept less than what they were owed.”
Tags: Citizens, Creditors, Debt crisis, Defaults, Latin American, Leaders, Loans, Owed, Pain, Prevent, Tool kit, Verge
Financial Times (December 7)
“Not only does Bankman-Fried appear to be lacking in shame; he seems almost contemptuous towards those who feel complex moral emotions.” Feeling embarrassed is not sufficient “when we are talking about as much as $8bn having gone missing, as many as 1mn creditors having lost their money, and a collapsed $32bn crypto empire being investigated by criminal prosecutors for alleged fraud on a vast scale (which Bankman-Fried denies).”
Tags: $8bn, Bankman-Fried, Collapsed, Complex, Contemptuous, Creditors, Criminal prosecutors, Crypto, Embarrassed, Feeling, Investigated, Lacking, Missing, Moral emotions, Shame, Sufficient
Financial Times (January 28)
“Oaktree Capital is risking a showdown with Beijing over control of one of ailing property developer Evergrande’s most-prized projects in mainland China.” Seizing “the Venice development could have a profound effect on the wider restructuring of Evergrande, the property developer that has scrambled to reassure its creditors since its finances started to unravel last year.”
Tags: Ailing, Beijing, China, Control, Creditors, Evergrande, Oaktree Capital, Property developer, Restructuring, Risking, Showdown, Venice development
Wall Street Journal (August 23)
The Government of Japan “is already on the hook to pay out nearly $10 trillion to its creditors.” This may appear *an impossibly large sum to rustle up” when annual tax collections amount to “less than $600 billion.” But today’s “economists talk more about the risk of issuing too little debt” and the U.S. may soon follow Japan’s lead. “Congress is debating trillions of dollars more in proposed spending that would push America’s borrowing toward levels policy makers in Tokyo have long embraced.”
Tags: $10 trillion, Borrowing, Congress, Creditors, Debt, Economists, Government, Japan, Risk, Spending, Tax collections, U.S.
Wall Street Journal (July 30)
“The retail industry’s woes are often blamed on e-commerce and an excessive number of brick-and-mortar stores. Creditors are now targeting another potential culprit: private-equity investors.”
Tags: Blame, Brick-and-mortar, Creditors, Culprits, E-commerce, Private-equity investors, Retail, Stores, Woes
Wall Street Journal (May 3)
“In a year filled with European elections, no one wants another debt crisis—even if this requires pretending that Greek politicians will implement pro-growth reforms they’ve repeatedly shunned.” To reach a tentative agreement, “Athens has agreed to make certain reforms in exchange for an approximately €7 billion disbursement from a 2015 bailout package so Greece can meet July debt repayments.” Once again, the can is kicked a little further down the road. “The one certainty is that Greece and its creditors will be back at the same stand a year from now.”
Tags: Bailout, Creditors, Debt crisis, Elections, Europe, Greece, Pretending, Reforms, Repayments
Wall Street Journal (March 1)
Mauricio Macri, the new Argentine President, is off to a dramatic start. “This week he settled a dispute with a number of the country’s creditors that had dragged on for more than a decade as it tarnished Argentina’s reputation. Mr. Macri now has the country poised for a return to international capital markets and perhaps an economic revival that was impossible under his Peronist predecessor Cristina Kirchner.”
Tags: Argentina, Creditors, Cristina Kirchner, Dispute, Economic revival, International capital markets, Mauricio Macri, Peronist, Reputation
Bloomberg (July 15)
“By this point you can probably agree that it was a mistake for Greece to join the European common currency in 2001…. So why exactly are Greece and its European creditors still trying against all odds and good sense to keep the country in the euro?”
The Economist (May 1)
Since 2010, foreign creditors “have extended the equivalent of more than $5 billion of 100-year bonds to Mexico in three currencies: dollars, sterling and now euros.” Moreover, Mexico has received exceedingly good terms (4.2%-6.1%) given its “distinctly spotty credit record.” This speaks volumes about the intensity of the global search for yield, but raises the inevitable question “what are the chances of investors, or their grandchildren, getting their money back?”
Financial Times (May 22)
“The German elite were the ones who understood what creating the euro implied. They realised that a currency union could not work without a political union. But the French elite wanted, instead, to end their humiliating dependence on the monetary policy set by Germany’s Bundesbank. Now, two decades later, Germany’s partners, including France, have learnt a painful lesson. Far from being liberated from German control, they are now far more firmly under it. In a big crisis, creditors rule.”
Tags: Bundesbank, Creditors, Currency union, France, Germany, Political union