Too bad it didn't make bigger headlines when Castro offered intelligence bases to the Chinese recently. The Cuban missile crisis, one remembers, was mostly of Castro's doing.
You want to march in the streets, El Heftie Windbag? March in your shorts.
Bump!!
Castro's Cuba Bad for Business ***Cuba's much-touted Foreign Investment Law No. 77 is, like the Shakespearean comedy, much ado about nothing. It fails to resolve problems such as the restricted liquidity of investments, high risk for foreign exchange losses and reversibility of investment agreements.
The experience of foreign investors in Cuba is replete with horror stories. In 1995, when the "liberalizing" law was passed, the Cuban government unilaterally canceled Spanish utility company Endesa's investments in hotels. Mexico's Grupo Domos found itself arbitrarily slapped with enormous back-tax penalties, and Canada's First Key Project Technologies' proposal to build a $350 million power plant was stolen by the Cuban government and shopped around elsewhere.
Cuba last year devalued its currency by 18 percent and fell behind in debt payments of $500 million to private banks and firms in France, Spain, Japan, Canada, Chile and Venezuela. (This does not include the repayment of government trade credits to France for the last four years and the principal on foreign debt of $35 billion.) With export prices down in nickel, sugar and tobacco, along with a fall in tourism and remittances from abroad, Cuba will remain an economic basket case. Doing business in countries that violate labor rights is not considered good business practice.***
March 2002 - Forbes.com The World's Billionaires - "Royal Flush" - Castro - $100 Million.
Cuban Economic Downturn Deepens Island's Hardship - Duh, it's the communism.***HAVANA (Reuters) - Communist Cuba's economy has been battered by falling tourism, low export prices and shortages of oil that will make life harder on the Caribbean island, experts and business sources said on Monday. President Fidel Castro's government plans to shut down almost half of Cuba's inefficient sugar mills, which cannot compete at today's rock-bottom world price of about 5 U.S. cents a pound. The drastic measure will leave tens of thousands of Cubans out of work in Cuba's largest industry, which for decades was the backbone of its socialist revolution.
Cuba's pressing need for hard currency to pay for essential imports of food and oil led the government to jack up prices for consumer goods sold indollar shops by up to 30 percent. The price hikes angered Cubans, most of whom earn local pesos but need dollars to buy a fan, a refrigerator or other basic consumer goods in the state-run shops. "It is going to be a very hot summer in Havana, which can only mean more push for migration and more social tension," said Damian Fernandez, an expert on Cuba at Miami's Florida International University.***