A BLANK PAGE

I kept staring at the screen yesterday...nothing.  Inspiration was nowhere to be seen.  Today isn't much better.  I really have come to believe that the weather plays a huge influence on one's ability to create and our weather has been absolutely stinko lately.  I remain uninspired and un-creative.

Of course the 7 billion people in the world aren't helping very much.  This is like the week before Christmas with nothing going on of any particular interest to anyone unless you are seriously in to whether Dilma is going to be impeached in which case this is your day as the Brazilian Senate did just that today.  Now comes the trial which might be a better show than the Olympics.  Sad part of it all is that it had to be done as her (and her followers) removal was critical to anything good happening there in the near future.  The country was paralyzed with the political drama.   These are hard economic times; the rebirth of the Brazilian economy is going to be a truly hard slog.

Then again, it's not Puerto Rico.   I don't know what Jacob/Jack accomplished--hell, I don't even know where he is not that it makes much difference.  One thing for sure, absent some sort of a super-duper political deal, this is shaping up to be one hell of a mess somewhat akin to Argentina but with perhaps far more reaching implications.  The U.S. really didn't have a dog in the Argie fight; yeah, the hedge funds were U.S. entities but who cared.  In Puerto Rico's case there are hedgies involved as well but should they be treated in the same manner as those in Argentina the implications for the Municipal Financing arena could be immense.  A single holder in due course could bugger-up any agreement.  Mind you, the problem has arisen only because no-bod-ee ever envisioned a problem of the magnitude of, say, Illinois in this market and hence no one ever paid much attention to what was in the bond indentures covering the formulation of debt obligations.  One thing that is NOT in them is a collective action clause.  Indeed, in many cases debt was issued on the basis that documents would follow: a bud of mine made a rather decent living by being the first guy to create a data base for documentation relating to various issues of municipal debt.  No one knew or cared.

Well, you can be sure that everybody is now busily reading their papers just to see what they have and are watching the goings-on in P.R. anxiously to see what it is that they might lose.  Funny.  We easily dismiss the activities of such countries like Greece whilst here, in our own little puddle, we might be creating the biggest financial storm anyone has ever seen.  But it's not here yet and in the mean time all I can do is speculate,  Hell, it's better than a blank page.