An odious method of contracting sovereign debt in a non-transparent way that needs to be banned

Ricardo Hausmann and Miguel Angel Santos, in their “Should Venezuela default?” refer to a “$5 billion private placement of ten-year bonds with a 6% coupon, it effectively had to give a 40% discount, leaving it with barely $3 billion”

That in cost represents approximately the same as a $3 billion ten-year bond issue with a 13.5% coupon. 

That type of financing of a sovereign should be prohibited for two reasons: 

First, that is, as you can understand, especially when the exact placement price of the issue is rarely reported, a completely non-transparent way of financing. 

Second, in the 2nd alternative, any new government who could obtain access to better credit terms, could much easier offer to repay the $3 billion issue, and thereby free the nation from those usury rates. As is, unless it enters into a default, it has to repay the full usury interests that are hidden away in the repayment of the $ 2bn in principal not received. 

And I would also like to know… who arranged that private placement, and who bought it… so that I could express my contempt for it. Do they not know that Human Right’s Watch has clearly established that in Venezuela human rights are being violated? I mean where does the limit go? Would it be right to buy bonds to finance the building of concentration camps... if the price, the risk premium, is right?

If financiers need credit ratings to base their decisions on, we citizens need governance ratings and ethic ratings to base the permission for our sovereigns to take on debt.

Also… speculative investors should not have the right in any restructuring to have the cake and eat it too, meaning collecting their high-risk premiums and the full principal.

A sovereign debt resolution mechanism should begin by looking at how sovereign credits originate

Joseph Stiglitz in company of many others has recently sent a letter to United Nation’s Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, requesting him to support the implementation of a Convention for the restructuring of sovereign debt.

Of course one cannot but wish for orderly sovereign debt resolution mechanisms, but one needs always to fear the law of unintended consequences… like that the expected benefits of any such mechanism, would just end up being transferred as additional costs to other sovereign borrowers.

Nor would one want lenders who lent to the sovereign at low rates, or acquired sovereign debt when no repayment problems were envisaged, meaning bona fide lenders, to receive the same treatment as those lenders who lending at high speculative rates, perhaps even helped to create the crisis that demands a debt resolution.

Thinking along these lines and reflecting on how often we have seen sovereign debts contracted in an unsustainable ways, perhaps in order to benefit a selected few, it should be clear that any debt resolution mechanism must simultaneously consider the origination of sovereign credits. And, in its simplest form, create a clear distinction between bona fide and speculative sovereign debts.

And, nothing discloses the frontiers between bona fide and speculative debts like the risk premiums charged or implied in the markets. And in this respect, for a starter, I would like to put forward the following definition.

Any sovereign debt that reflects a risk premium that exceeds for instance in 4 percent the lowest interest rate paid for similar debt by other sovereigns, the speculative threshold rate, STR, should be classified as speculative sovereign debt, SSD.

And in the case of a restructuring of a sovereign debt, I propose that any creditor who entered in possession of his credit in conditions that would deem it to be a SSD, should have all interest received in excess of the allowed STR, automatically deducted from the principal.

The basic principle that lies behind this is that if, and only if, a sovereign debt is restructured, a speculative creditor should not have the right to eat the cake and have it too… which translated means should not have the right to obtain the high risk-premiums and 100 percent of the capital too.

And, in presenting this proposal, I am not acting as a creditor, nor as a sovereign borrower, but only as a citizen who wants to avoid governments to mortgage our future on unreasonable terms.

There is currently way too much thinking of what to do if a sovereign credit must be restructured, compared with the thinking of how to avoid unreasonable sovereign debt… or in other words too much talking about odious debts, and too little about odious credit and odious borrowings.

Why for instance is there so much insistence in credit-repayment worthiness ratings, and almost none in ethic ratings which could better show credit-receiving worthiness? 

Should the collection of very high risk premiums on sovereign debt be allowed to go hand in hand with the collection of 100% of the principal?

I have not discussed this with anyone but myself… so I do not hold myself too much to this my own opinion… and so it can change. 

I am and have always been concerned with sovereign over indebtedness, as that affects foremost the citizens of the over-indebted country's own possibilities to take on debt… to realize their own dreams and not the politicians’ dreams... and so I have been toying around with many ideas. Among these:

If a lender gives a sovereign a loan at an interest rate that exceeds for instance 3% what the "safest" sovereign has to pay for a loan, “the overcompensation”, then, if the sovereign runs into trouble, and declares default, should it not immediately be able to apply all overcompensation to the capital owed?

Why? Because frankly I feel that the lender to a sovereign should not be able to eat his cake and have it too. If he charges a sovereign higher interest rates because of its riskiness, well then he should not be able to expect to fully collect 100% of the principal.

Does this make some sense? 

perkurowski@gmail/com