After Puerto Rico’s Debt Crisis, Worries Shift to Virgin Islands<br />“I don’t think you can say it’s a crisis, but they have challenges — high debt, weak economies<br />and unfunded pensions,” said Jim Millstein, whose firm, Millstein & Company, advised Puerto Rico on its economic affairs and debt restructuring until this year and has reviewed the situation in Guam and the Virgin Islands.<br />“Spending borrowed money is too easy.”<br />But the debt dilemma is now most acute in the Virgin Islands — the three main islands are St. Thomas, St. Croix<br />and St. John — where the government has been struggling ever since a giant refinery closed in 2012, wiping out the territory’s biggest nongovernment employer and a mainstay of its tax base.
