Nowadays the so-called U.S. embargo merely stipulates that the Castro regime pay cash up front through a third–party bank for all U.S. agricultural products; no Ex-Im (U.S. taxpayer) financing of such sales. Enacted by the Bush team in 2001 this cash-up-front policy has kept the U.S. taxpayer among the few in the world not screwed and tattooed by Fidel Castro.

By Humberto Fontova. at Americano

“Cuba Policy isn’t made in Washington,” griped Bill Press in a CNN column. “It’s made in Miami by former Batista supporters who think they can reverse history!”

“Bush’s defense of the (Cuban) embargo serves a family voting bloc and little else!” once griped Kathleen Parker in a column.

“A small number of powerful exiles in South Florida cow our politicians into keeping the crazy Cuban policy!” griped media baron Al Neuharth in USA Today.

“The powerful Cuban exile lobby has long dictated the U.S.’s Cuba policy.” Tim Padgett, Time Magazine.

And it goes much further. Those insufferable Cuban-exile lobbyists managed to get Bill Buckley and Gore Vidal, Chris Dodd and Larry Craig, Pat Buchanan and Antonio Villaraigosa, George Will and Noam Chomsky, The Brookings Institution and the Cato Institute, the Wall Street Journal and The Nation, The U.S. Communist Party and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce–all on the same side of an issue. All of the above have come out publicly against the so-called Cuban embargo. All blame it on the “politically-powerful” and “well-heeled” Cuban-American lobby.

And you are quite welcome, American Taxpayer. To wit:

“A (wikileaks) cable reported on a breakfast hosted by a U.S. diplomat in Havana with commercial and economic counselors from five of Cuba’s largest trading partners — China, Spain, Canada, Brazil and Italy — plus key creditor nations France and Japan. The diplomats reported continuing problems collecting their Cuban debts, with the Japanese noting that after restructuring all of Cuba’s official debt in 2009, Tokyo had not received any payments….Even China admitted to having problems getting paid on time and complained about Cuban requests to extend credit terms from one to four years,” the cable said. “France and Canada responded with `welcome to the club.’ ”

Last month South Africa was also forced to write off 1 billion Rand debt owed to them by Cuba.

In fact , despite all the media and political gabble and scribble about some “Cuba embargo,”  the U.S. currently serves as Cuba’s biggest food supplier and fifth biggest import partner, selling  $710 million worth of U.S. products to Castro’s fiefdom in 2008, and transacting more than $2 billion worth of business with Cuba in the last decade.  Nowadays the so-called U.S. embargo merely stipulates that the Castro regime pay cash up front through a third–party bank for all U.S. agricultural products; no Ex-Im (U.S. taxpayer) financing of such sales. Enacted by the Bush team in 2001 this cash-up-front policy has kept the U.S. taxpayer among the few in the world not screwed and tattooed by Fidel Castro. Just ask the French, Canadians, Japanese, South African, etc. etc. etc.

So again: U.S. taxpayer, you are quite welcome.

Not that Castroite sponging started recently. In fact, per-capita-wise, for years Cuba has qualified as the world’s biggest debtor nation with a foreign debt of close to $50 billion, a credit rating nudging Somalia’s, and an uninterrupted record of defaults. In 2008 one of the world’s most respected economic forecasting firms, the London- based Economist Intelligence Unit, ranked Cuba as virtually the world’s worst country business-wise. Only Iran and Angola ranked lower. This firm predicted that Cuba’s abysmal business climate would remain that way for the next five years, at the very least.

Standard & Poors refuses even to rate Cuba, regarding the economic figures released by the regime as utterly bogus.

In 1986 Cuba defaulted on most of its foreign debt to Europe. Three years ago France’s version of the U.S. government’s Export- Import Bank, (named COFACE) cut off Cuba’s credit line. Mexico’s Bancomex quickly followed suit. This came about because the Castro regime stuck it to French taxpayers for $175 million and to Mexican taxpayers for $365 million. Bancomex was forced to impound Cuban assets in three different countries in an attempt to recoup its losses.

Last year the Castro regime suddenly froze $1 billion held in Cuban banks by foreign (mostly Spanish) businessmen. “Cuban banks informed depositors that they had no foreign exchange to back up the convertible peso in which many were doing business,” explained Reuters Havana Bureau.

However valuable to American taxpayers today, U.S. sanctions against Castro’s Stalinist regime were not originally enacted due to their abysmal credit rating. In July 1960 Castro’s KGB-trained security forces stormed into 5,911 U.S. owned businesses in Cuba and stole them all at Soviet gunpoint – $2 billion were heisted from outraged U.S. businessmen and stockholders. Rubbing his hands in triumphant glee, Castro boasted at maximum volume to the entire world that he was freeing Cuba from “Yankee economic slavery!” (Che Guevara’s term, actually) and that “he would never repay a penny!”

This is the only promise Fidel Castro has ever kept in his life.

Humberto Fontova is the author of four books, including Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant and Exposing the Real Che Guevara. Visit hfontova.com

This article originally posted at The Americano

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