Posted on 04/27/2024 7:40:13 AM PDT by george76
Alejandro Fonseca stood in line for several hours outside a bank in Havana hoping to withdraw Cuban pesos from an ATM...
HAVANA -- Alejandro Fonseca stood in line for several hours outside a bank in Havana hoping to withdraw Cuban pesos from an ATM, but when it was almost his turn, the cash ran out. He angrily hopped on his electric tricycle and traveled several kilometers to another branch where he finally managed to withdraw some money after wasting the entire morning.
“It shouldn’t be so difficult to get the money you earn by working,”...
Fonseca is one of an increasing number of frustrated Cubans who have to grapple with yet another hurdle while navigating the island's already complicated monetary system — a shortage of cash.
Long queues outside banks and ATM’s in the capital, Havana, and beyond start forming early in the day as people seek cash for routine transactions like buying food and other essentials.
Experts say there are several reasons behind the shortage, all somehow related to Cuba's deep economic crisis, one of the worst in decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Several chains tried this in my area, back around 2018, promising to abandon the "impersonal" use of self-checkouts and returning to the good old days of face-to-face customer service. Unfortunately for everybody involved, the "faces" on the service end never materialized. The self-checkouts were back with a vengeance, after a year or so. It was just as you observed about Walmart, i.e., no staffing, long lines and interminable waits, even for a couple of items. I predict the Walmart experience will prove the same.
Exactly, it’s a deal with the people. Don’t Rock The Boat, and we’ll leave you alone. That will work as long as the economy is good.
Years ago a friend took me to a Vietnamese restaurant to a meeting of veterans. These were veterans of the South Vietnamese Army, not the US Army.
Their case for why the country shouldn’t be communist was quite compelling.
1) I have seen long lines at ATMs all over Central America and they have no economic crises in those countries.
2) It tends to be crime. The trucks carrying cash to the ATMs get robbed.
3) The people voted in the socialist leadership in Venezuela. Starting with Chavez. The elitist Swamp there, who were getting erased, manufactured some philosophical appeal to the US and probably transferred some cash to receptive ears and all of a sudden, the people’s choice in Venezuela became evil. Chavez didn’t cheat. He bribed the people with largesse, just as is done by incumbent US presidents.
4) The world has changed. QE did it. Money comes from nothingness, courtesy of Ben Bernanke — though let’s be clear here — he had no choice. Capitalism had clearly failed in 2009 and the only way to prevent outright starvation in the US was to create trillions of dollars on a whim and distribute it.
So don’t worship at the altar of capitalism. We run 2 Trillion dollar deficits of money borrowed from the Fed who got it from nothingness and that is the ONLY thing that keeps wheels turning. This, people, is not capitalism.
The proper term is “Free Enterprise”.
There is always “Capitalism”, it’s a question of who controls the Capital: The individual, Oligarchs, or The State.
No. The proper term is printed money from nothingness, handed out by the trillions starting in 2009 to prevent outright US starvation.
This is not Free Enterprise. It doesn’t have a term, because no one dares to create one.
That’s what I say. Capitalism is nothing but the innate exchange between people for desired products and services. It is fundamental and elemental to all societies.
I was in Iraq soon after the invasion and capitalism was everywhere. People were hustling - selling goods, produce, just about anything they could grow, steal or import. Dollars ruled. I have a great pic of a farmer transporting onions in a truck on MSR Tampa which I took as we drove past. The bed was packed high with onions in a pyramid several feet above the bed walls. Like something from a grocery store display. No netting or anything, just stacked and balanced.
No rules, no regulations, no controls. Just free, unfettered commerce. Yeah, capitalism.
President Trump should just go ahead and Order the Transfer of the entire entertainment industry to Cuba, to help their economy of course...
I thought the government just decreed wealth in a socialist state.
At least that would be an improvement.
“Capitalism had clearly failed in 2009”
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Hopefully you wrote this as sarcasm, because nothing could be more wrong.
What failed was Liberal politicians (Bush, Pelosi, Reid, & Co), likely by design (Cloward-Piven), overheated the banking/mortgage sector by forcing banks to make loans to homebuyers who had no objective means of paying them back.
“Capitalism” had nothing to do with that. A state-run centrally planned economy had everything to do with that.
I thought China was going to help them.
Why are banks needed in a Communist utopia?
are the banks nationalized???
Canada is about to dump Trudeau.
Of course it failed. It relies on a substance created from nothingness. How could it not fail?
Rush said it best, the problem is not an unequal distribution of wealth, it’s the unequal distribution of Capitalism.
I see the term "informal market" has come into currency over the old "black market" in ABC's editorial style book, and it isn't about racism. "True market" might be a more accurate term, since that's where the actual purchase decisions and actions are made. Von Mises, Hayek, and Friedman had a lot to say about that. And if the ratio between black market and government diktat is 10:1, you've got a few problems right there in River City, and they're more than notational.
This is why black markets become as ubiquitous as they are illegal under authoritarian governments. It isn't capitalism since you can run a perfectly functional barter economy in the complete absence of capital. It's because command economies are essentially fictional creations of theorists who happily discard theory when it comes to their own morning cup of coffee.
I’ll accept that the Cold War is really over when Guantanamo is converted to a Disney resort...
just print money like our govt does ...who then just tosses it to whomever is the the flavor of the month.
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