Posted on 07/31/2009 7:12:54 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
HAVANA: It's hard to find a spare tire in Cuba these days, or a cup of yoghurt.
Air conditioners are shut off in the dead heat. Factories close at peak hours, and workers go without their government-subsidized lunches.
Cuba has ordered austere energy savings this summer, and the Council of Ministers and Communist Party Central Committee met this week to consider more cuts to cope with budget deficits and plummeting export profits.
More likely, the shortages result from a global recession that hit an already struggling economy still reeling from last year's hurricanes. President Raul Castro told Cubans in a national address Sunday to work harder because they have no one to blame but themselves.
"The only thing I know is that we're screwed," said one 27-year-old who only gave the name Raul because he sells cement and housing materials on the black market. "I don't work. I find a way to survive."
The latest cuts are small compared with strict measures imposed during the "special period", when Cubans nearly starved after subsidies dried up with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nor are they as severe as the blackouts of 2004, when technical problems at power plants left much of the island in the dark for hours at a time. Fans and water pumps were idled. Milk and food spoiled, while electrical surges damaged refrigerators, televisions and other costly appliances.
The price of nickel, Cuba's chief export, is down more than 50 percent from last year, according to Toronto-based Sherritt International Cooperation, Cuba's largest energy partner.
The company's oil production on the island was down 19 percent last quarter compared to the second quarter of 2008, mainly because Sherritt suspended drilling earlier this year when Cuba fell behind on its payments.
The government and Sherritt have worked out a plan to pay down the debt, and the company says Cuba has been sticking to it. But the situation could have spurred the mandatory energy savings. Neither Sherritt nor the Cuban government would provide more details.
Or Cuba may be trying to save unused oil to bolster strategic reserves while prices are still relatively low, said Dan Erikson of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.
They got the name wrong should be, The USA.
The US is still embargoing Cuba, but China isn’t. Why doesn’t Cuba boom like China? Maybe because Cuba is more than communist in name only?
Cuba has no money to pay for Chinese and Canadian goods shipped there.
If Cuba had something to barter, that problem could be fixed. But maybe Canada and China don’t want to invest there because it could be all whisked away at Castro’s whim.
It probably has more to do with a mercantilist class in China that goes back thousands of years. Plus my experience with the Chinese is that they are almost all hard workers.
“If Cuba had something to barter, that problem could be fixed....”
....back in the old days Cuba used to barter high grade cane sugar to Russia for oil...with the widespread use of sweetner made from corn; cane sugar doesn’t have as much clout...remember the old 6oz Cokes?....the ones that made your eyes water when you burped?...that was the old cane sugar formula and those babies packed a wallop...last month a freeper advised you can still get them across the border in Mexico....hey, there’s an idea!...smuggle guns into Mexico for 6oz Cokes ;-)
***If Cuba had something to barter, that problem could be fixed. ***
I remember an old cartoon from about 48 years ago when the old USSR became the chief trading partner with Cuba.
It showed Nikita Khrushchev sitting at a table with a cup of coffee held out in his hand. Next to him is Castro pouring sugar into the cup from a 100 lb bag. the sugar flows around the cup and half buries Khrushchev in it.
Sixty percent of all Cuban exiles said they send money to family in Cuba. As south Florida suffers, so does the flow of money to Cuban relatives.
another Marxist success story and Obama applauds
wow.
The tell-tell words in this piece are “these days” which the Left uses to imply that the situation or condition they’re describing is anomolous, and due to some recent development. It has been hard to find a spare tire in Cuba, as well as yougurt, for the past 25 years as well as toilet paper or a lightbulb or a screwdriver or a wrench or scissors or an egg beater or underwear or shoes — THERE ARE NO CONSUMER GOODS. Food and clothing and all goods are rationed. People trade their great-grandfather’s carved mahagony table for a small electric fan; their great-grandmother’s gold locket with diamonds for a hammer and a handful of nails.
If you don’t want aspirin or any anti-biotics or a band-aid.
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