Hello and welcome to the China Problem episode of Slate Money, your guide to the business

and finance news of the week. I'm Felix, I'm an Axios, here with Emily Peck of Axios.

Hi.

With Elizabeth Spires of New York Times and other places.

Hello.

And we are going to talk about China. We're going to talk about how they seem to be throwing a

spanner in the works of international sovereign debt restructuring. We are going to talk about

collectibles and why people are spending tens of thousands of dollars on videotapes of rocky.

We are going to be talking about mortgages and why a whole bunch of people who should really be

able to get a mortgage, can't get a mortgage. We have a Slate Plus segment about Rupert Merdoch,

which presages this coming Monday's Slate Money Succession. It's all coming up on Slate Money.

So let's start with sovereign debt because that's always my favorite subject. And specifically

countries that are in debt trouble that have defaulted or that might soon default.

Zambia being exhibit A because it has been in default for over two years now but there are lots

of others including Ghana. And the big thing that everyone in Washington was talking about this

week because this week was the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank is that these debts

are too high. The debt to GDP ratios are much higher and the debt service to GDP ratios are much

higher than they've been for many many years. And in many cases they need to be restructured. And yet

again we have found ourselves in a situation where we just don't know how that's going to happen.

When it was mostly bank loans it took many many many years to the bank loans to get restructured

because people worried that the banks would wind up going best. Then when it was bonds people

didn't know how the bonds would get restructured because you couldn't get unanimous approval

...