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Dante Disparte is Chairperson of ASP’s Business Council for American Security . He is the Founder and CEO of Risk Cooperative, a specialized risk, strategy, and investment firm based in Washington D.C.

In a new post published in the Huffington Post, Disparte discusses the many opportunities to reverse the island’s economic woes, which have triggered one of the largest non-conflict related resettlements in recent history.

With nearly 10 per cent of the island’s inhabitants foregoing the tropical paradise over the last decade, it begs the question of what policy measures can be implemented to reverse this trend and put Puerto Rico on a path toward a brighter future.

While Puerto Rico’s municipal debt default continues to spiral out of control, it is more akin to falling down a flight of stairs than a precipitous economic collapse. Collapse is near, however, and the debate in Washington about appointing a Federal Financial Control Board signals that an intervention is nigh.

The question remains at what cost will this intervention come and how will the long term future of Puerto Rico’s Commonwealth be affected. Already, a mute, non-voting observer on Capitol Hill (Puerto Rico and D.C. share this dubious distinction), the likely long term cost of this intervention from a bill introduced by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch in December, 2015, may remove what little powers Puerto Rico has over its domestic and economic affairs. Against this stark backdrop, some options for a path forward …

Read the entire article here.

To read more background on the crisis in Puerto Rico, read Adjunct Junior Fellow Clark Derrington’s piece, “The Economics of Debt in Puerto Rico“.

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