If the capitalist cheerleaders for Cuba like Phil Peters and Anya Landau French are jumping for joy over these radical changes( not socialism) the Cuban people are in for a hard ride.
Cort http://cubantriangle.blogspot.com/2011/11/instant-capital-formation.html Friday, November 4, 2011 Instant capital formation<http://cubantriangle.blogspot.com/2011/11/instant-capital-formation.html> "Capital formation," the accumulation of funds that allow persons, companies, and economies to invest and grow, is a process that accompanies years of work and production and saving. It's a process, not an event; it rarely happens overnight or at the stroke of a pen. Except in Cuba, yesterday. By allowing the purchase and sale of residential property effective November 10, the socialist state transformed the nature of that property. Before, a home was an asset to use and to pass on to heirs. Now it can be made liquid. The result, at the family level, is instant capital formation; the creation of wealth through the creation of a new legal use for assets to which Cuban families hold clear title. This is a historic step for socialist Cuba and a new landmark in the reform process led by Raul Castro. *The government has created a vast new stock of capital in private hands that will be used for private ends in a new market that will be driven by decisions of private parties*. Moreover, this market will see an *inflow of capital from Cubans abroad* who will help relatives buy homes. To help this market work, the National Housing Institute is now cut out of the transaction process, something that makes Cubans smile. It's now clear that when Raul Castro talks about "structural change," he means it. Yesterday's action gives meaning to that Marxist term that even *capitalists can grasp*. The debate over the scope and pace of the reform process will continue, vigorously in Cuba and amid an intensifying blizzard of nonsense in Miami. But the question of the government's willingness to end burdensome controls and allow major expansions of private activity is now settled. Yesterday's action constitutes an important human rights improvement because it transforms the nature of property rights and ends a prohibition on normal, beneficial transactions that affected all Cuban families. It also ends an odious aspect of Cuban immigration law: the requirement that emigrants (under the *salida definitiva* category, itself a good candidate for abolition) forfeit their property to the government. All in all, a good day for Cuba and for the Cuban people. Here are earlier items on the housing policy announcement<http://cubantriangle.blogspot.com/2011/08/housing-details.html>last summer, on the convoluted *permuta* market <http://cubantriangle.blogspot.com/2011/07/real-estate-market-on-prado.html>that will now pass into history, and on the Miami politics<http://cubantriangle.blogspot.com/2011/08/marios-maginot-line.html>. Posted by Phil Peters ------------------------------------------- http://thehavananote.com/2011/11/cuban_scholars_share_lessons_changing_economy Cuban Scholars Share Lessons of a Changing Economy Anya Landau French Nov 3, 2011 Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a talk cohosted by the Center for Democracy in the Americas <http://www.democracyinamericas.org/>, the American University School of Public Affairs <http://www.american.edu/spa/> and the American University Center for Latin American and Latino Studies<http://www.american.edu/clals/>, given by several visiting Cuban professors specializing in political science and economics. I came away with several clear lessons that the vast majority of Americans (and apparently whomever is giving President Obama advice on Cuba these days) do not yet understand about a radically changing Cuba. Rafael Hernandez, editor of the noted Cuban journal *Temas*<http://www.temas.cult.cu/>and a leading political scientist in Cuba, showed just how political the economic reforms in Cuba really ar. He focused on four key areas in which the process to update the economic model is crucially linked to adapting some key elements of Cubas longstanding political model: de-centralization, de-statization, de-bureaucratization and, building a *new rule of law that supports and legitimizes the private sector in a way not seen in Cuba in decades*. Jorge Mario Sanchez, an economist and prolific researcher at the University of Havana's Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy<http://www.ceec.uh.cu/?q=node/3>, addressed why these changes are needed now I loved his Pac-Man metaphor, a Cuba fat from consumption but not producing enough to sustain itself and reminded us why they have been so slow. These changes, unlike those emergency measures taken in the 1990s, are here to stay, so theres an abundance of caution. This of course means revising new rules quite a lot and essentially learning by doing. But, Sanchez notes, the goal is 35% of the labor force shifted to the non-state sector in the next few years not an insignificant shift. Carlos Alzugaray, a former senior diplomat now at the University of Havanas Center for Cuban-U.S. Studies<http://www.uh.cu/centros/ceseu/Estructura%20profs%20invst.htm>, assured us the reform process is something we might not have recognized (or believed) until right about now: relentless. Himself impatient with the pace of change at times, Alzugaray joked that he didnt say the process was fast, but that hardly a week goes by when there isnt another change announced. And so it is. On the heels of news<http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/29/uk-cuba-cars-idUSLNE78S01I20110929>that Cubans would now be allowed to buy and sell used cars of any kind (they used to only be allowed to do so with the pre-1950s era *almendrones*sputtering around the island), this week Cuba announced <http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2011/11/03/nacional/artic05.html>that natural born Cubans and permanent residents will now have the right to buy and sell their homes, and transfer ownership to others on the island. Not surprisingly, the rules come with some caveats, like only one primary residence and one vacation home allowed. These are still incredibly meaningful changes, and the fact that these sorts of changes have finally begun rolling out might explain why Freedom House no fan of the Cuban government due to its human rights record found optimism in a recent survey<http://freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/105.pdf>it conducted on the island. Whereas a year ago, when I last traveled to the island, I detected mounting impatience (a sort of, this is never going to change attitude), Cubans can now see real changes are finally on the way and here to stay. Particularly important is the apparent willingness of the Cuban government to keep revising rules to allow farmers to work even larger parcels of land than first granted several years ago, to let paladars serve fifty, not just twenty, customers when they dont work as well as they should, that should really offer hope. Theres still so much to do: bureaucrats in the way, as Raul Castro himself has complained, too many imports and not enough exports (though major government belt-tightening has gone a long way to alleviate that problem), highly educated workers with not enough jobs to complement their skills (and thus a brain drain exacerbated by incredibly generous U.S. immigration policies towards Cubans), and more. And just as Hernandez pointed out the political dynamics *in Cuba* that must adapt for the economic reforms to succeed, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez offered another political message <http://granma.cu/ingles/cuba-i/27oct-44B-discurso.html> during the United Nations debate last week on the U.S. embargo of Cuba. "Today, Cuba is changing and will resolutely change everything that has to be changed within the Revolution and within socialism. More revolutionary and better socialism." Its a message that continues to fall on deaf ears here in the United States. 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