Puerto Rico: The Commonwealth Plays Hardball

The question is whether it is playing against the House of Representatives, and its heavy handed PROMESA draft bill, or its creditors.

In any event, according to the Financial Times, Puerto Rico's legislature has passed a law giving its governor "the power to declare a state of emergency and halt payments to creditors until January 2017."

There is a long history of these sorts of laws in the United States, most from the Nineteenth Century, although there were a few in the Great Depression too.  Most were eventually struck down as violations of the Contracts Clause, but collection against Puerto Rico itself might run up against whatever sovereign immunity the Commonwealth might posses.