for the first time. the commonwealth failed to make a payment to its public finance corporation over the weekend. that s a small part of the island s debt. the national economic correspondent for the wall street journal joins us from d.c. to talk about this. puerto rico is a u.s. commonwealth. how does it structure lead to this crisis? reporter: in a few dimensions errol. because they are not a state and they have amassed all this debt they are not able to use the bankrupt restructuring process that is available to say, detroit. when detroit was in a similar situation two years ago their municipalities were able to file for chapter 9 under the u.s. bankruptcy code. because puerto rico is a territory and not a state they don t have access to that bankruptcy code. there is a movement to change