Ep 91 - A Truly Gnarly Year (ft. Sydney Maki)

A Truly Gnarly Year Times are pretty bad for emerging markets, what with a surging dollar, interest rate increases, etc. But somehow, despite having a president with, ahem, eccentric economic views, Turkey's recent $1.5 billion bond issuance was reportedly way oversubscribed. So things are a bit weird. We've long admired and learned from the work of this week's guest, Sydney Maki of Bloomberg. Sydney joins us to talk about the state of the sovereign debt world in general and, in particular, about a couple of deals (and debt crises) that have perplexed us. What are the prospects for a restructuring of Suriname's debt, and how does the discovery of offshore oil complicated things? And what should we make of the recent blue bond transaction involving Barbados and the Nature Conservancy? We are skeptical of debt buybacks in general, especially when the country buys back only a fraction of debt at seemingly high prices. But maybe we are being too cynical about the blue bond deal? Sydney helps us make sense of what's going on. Producer: Leanna Doty