Puerto Rico has been in a painful recession since 2006; previous governments dug it deeper into debt by borrowing to pay operating expenses, year after year. For the last two years, officials have been seeking assistance from Washington, testifying before stern congressional committees and even before the supreme court. In May, with creditors at its heels and its coffers depleted, it sought what is essentially bankruptcy relief in federal court, the first time in history that an American state or territory has taken this extraordinary measure, because of a $123 billion debt. Government workers are foregoing pension money; public health and infrastructure projects are not happening because of the crushing weight of debt. Now, Hurricane Maria has ripped through Puerto Rico, causing potentially thirty billion dollars in damage and threatening to exacerbate the population exodus that has helped push the island into bankruptcy. See