2:51:30 Except he was doing it for defense and he got kicked out, you remember? When Asgard... When Asgard... It's a sucker state to take him that's for sure. He is no good! No, you're right. Put the women back in this job! Anything you want to wind up with, sir? Yes I do. I want to get this out of the way once and for all we've talked about this the way the post office was treated and that fact that they've been screwed over and everyone thinks are a bunch of lazy A-holes when in fact...and they can't..they're going broke when in fact none of this is true as we've discussed Puerto Rico! We've talked about this a little bit yeah but I want to get this out of the way Puerto Rico is a target of the
2:52:12 The banks, IMF? The banks. No the hitmen, the economic hitman yes and I think it's a test to see if we can do this to other states to screw them, to screw the states or in this case a territory with an onerous banking Tricks. Start with the Puerto Rico payday loans. By Sakib Bhatti, director of the Refund America Project and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. He's co-author of the new report, Puerto Rico's Pay Day Loans. Carlos Gaisa and Sakib Bhatti we welcome you both to Democracy Now! And Sakib I'd like to start with you in your report if you could lay out for us some of the main findings of your study? a
2:53:11 The island borrowed $4.3 billion and will pay back 33 1⁄2 billion dollars in interest, that's an effective interest rate of 785%. And what we're finding is that this is actually just the tip of the iceberg there's actually a lot of debt Puerto Rico has entered into that is either legally or morally illegitimate And so my organization, the Re-Affine America Project, we're actually going to be releasing a series of reports over the next couple of months that will look at the different ways in which Wall Street banks really targeted Puerto Rico with predatory deals and really calling on the permits control
2:53:50 board to be put in the interests of the people of Puerto Rico first, to cancel the illegitimate debt so that we can properly fund services. So keep name names. What are the banks and what's actually—how are they responsible for this debt? Yeah, so basically there were a series of banks including Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, now Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Banco Santander. There were the lead underwriters on these deals that really targeted Puerto Rico for these immense interest rates So the way so these these payday loans are called capital appreciation bonds and the way these funds work is very much like a payday loan where because you're not allowed to pay back the principal or the interest for many years and Over time, the interest keeps compounding. You end up with astronomical interest rates And so what happened over there was because you had the situation where?
2:54:41 You know, Puerto Rico is a colonial economy and not in charge of its own finances at the end of the day. There's so much pressure coming from the outside because those issues couldn't be resolved in the same way that a cash-strapped family trying to put food on the table might go to a payday lender because they have to make ends meet. You had Puerto Rico trying to put food on the table—you Run they provide basic services needing to find ways to make ends meet and banks whooped in Banks succeeded group Goldman Sachs and said hey here's a deal even though They knew that these deals would be really bad and Puerto Rico never we ought to pay them in the long run. Well Wow I'm gonna give you borderline for that one
2:55:22 I had no idea. This is great, good stuff and listen then part two of kind of wrap it up and it's one of the end you look at this and you realize that this was I think a test run for what they're going to try to do with all day loans all station yeah exactly holy moly I think that's the point that they had to know the underwriters had to know that there was no way that Puerto Rico would be able to pay these loans back I want to put if we can on the screen for the television viewers. And for radio listeners, by the way you can go to democracynow.org Oh Jesus! Why throw that in there? You doofus... That's dumb. Anyway sorry. I'd like to put on these are some of the names of the companies that you see their Goldman Sachs AG Edwards Bear Stearns JP Morgan Morgan Stanley UBS investment
2:56:16 Lehman Brothers, Santander Securities—popular securities. But I want to show also the chart of one of the bonds that were issued. This is a 2007 sales tax bond where it shows for instance that in—Puerto Rico borrowed several tranches of bonds, but one was for $98 million dollars that was supposed to be paid back I'm sorry, $97 million that was supposed to be paid back in 2054. That means for 47 years the banks agreed you don't pay us any principal and you don't pay us any interest for 47 years! And at the end of the 47 years that $97 million becomes one billion dollars that Puerto Rico has to pay back.
2:57:08 a thousand times what the original loan was. So, the banks had to know that there was no way that Puerto Rico could pay this back but yet they continued to issue these bonds. Fantastic! Capital appreciation loans has got to be my favorite quote It's unbelievable. Loan sharking has now become capital appreciation loans Yeah, and this is the banks that we're gonna end up having to deal with more and more with the bankers that are trying you know taking all their efforts to push into Hillary And if they don't get a Hillary and they get Trump The banks gonna pull the plug on the economy They're gonna try to sink this guy yeah these bankers are out of control