Nobel laureate Paul Krugman writes in The New York Times that while Puerto Rico missed a bond payment, with many comparing it to Greece the two are very different cases. Krugman argues Greece is in a far worse position than Puerto Rico underlining that first of all the Central American country is actually part of the US fiscal union, which saved its population from suffering the harsh economic downturn the ordinary Greeks are enuring. Puerto Rico might have experienced a steep economic slump from 2006 onwards, but the human consequences in terms of per capita income were far better than those in Greece, he says. While in Greece there was a vicious 30 per cent fall in GDP, in Puerto Rico income per capita actually rose, he argues. When Puerto Rico’s payments to creditors in the US faltered its welfare benefits from Washington went up. “So Puerto Rico automatically received aid on a scale beyond anything conceivable in Europe”, he writes.