The NY Times has a story up today about the hot new trend of capitalism sweeping communist Cuba. Whether this trend is real and how long it will last is an open question. For the moment, Cuba is in desperate need of all of the help it can get.
Today Cuba is confronting its worst financial crisis in decades, driven by government inefficiency and mismanagement and a decades-long U.S. economic embargo that has led to a collapse in domestic production, rising inflation, constant power outages and shortages of fuel, meat and other necessities.
So the island’s communist leaders are turning back the clock and embracing private entrepreneurs, a class of people they once vilified as “filthy” capitalists…
“Never has the private sector been given so much space to operate in Cuba,” said Pavel Vidal, who studies Cuba’s economy and is a university professor in Cali, Colombia. “The…
