I just read this article, which details an incredibly fucked-up situation. I'll summarize:
- Neither Puerto Rico itself, nor its public corporations are allowed to file for bankruptcy, unlike the rest of the United States
- Puerto Rico has been lobbying Congress to pass a law to allow it to file bankruptcy
- The hedge funds have been lobbying to oppose the law, on the grounds that allowing bankruptcy would constitute a "bailout" (but in fact such an event would cost American taxpayers nothing; it would only harm bondholders (i.e., the hedge funds).
OR
They could vote to become the 51st state in the Union. This would solve the bankruptcy issue while screwing the hedge funds who gambled. No need for Congress to intervene. Two birds, one stone.
The people of Puerto Rico have (arguably)
already voted to become a state in 2012. I say "arguably" because the devil is in the details. The Puerto Rican political parties are basically organized around the question of how their relationship to the US should play out. There are three factions: one wants statehood, another wants complete independence, and the other favors the status quo. The split between the three is something like 45/45/10, with independence being the minority option.
The most recent ballot questions seem designed to produce a pro-statehood result. Instead of asking a single question like "which do you prefer: statehood, independence, or the current status?", they instead went with a two-part question. The first question was "do you want to change the status, yes or no?", which would get the statehood and independence supporters voting the same way because they both want change. The second question was "If we're going to change the status, what do you want it to be?" In the second question, the statehood supporters strongly outnumber the independence supporters, so the result is no surprise.
The supporters of the status quo, knowing that the ballot was rigged against them, advocated abstaining from the second question entirely, which approximately 27% of voters did. The result has since been the subject of intense debate. The statehood supporters say that the result clearly favors their side because 61% of the people who answered the second question supported statehood, while the status quo supporters say the result supports their side because only 44% of the people who submitted ballots favored statehood on the second question.
Regardless of how you interpret the result, any vote by the people in Puerto Rico on this matter has no binding effect. Congress has the sole power to grant statehood, which they could theoretically do even if the people of Puerto Rico were strongly opposed to it.