Humberto Fontova. NewsMax.com.
Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2002.
Kenny Lay, you sorry chump. Take a lesson from the PREMIER corporate looter
and hypemeister. You got nailed after only 10 years. Fidel Castro is still at it
after 43.
And the very people who want you keelhauled and horsewhipped proclaim loud
hosannas to Fidel's charms as a business partner.
They want you "in the pokey." Yet liberals insist in Congress, on
CNN, in the New York Times that doing business with Fidel is a can't-lose
proposition for any American and that moral and material blessings will shower
all involved.
Here's a guy who didn't just defraud U.S. stockholders, folks; he outright
stole not millions, but BILLIONS, from them. He didn't hide behind the Fifth or
hire lawyers to obfuscate the matter, either. He crowed about it gleefully, then
boasted that he'd never repay it – and hasn't, not a farthing.
The Europeans (especially the French) gloated while watching Fidel loot
Uncle Sam. Oh, how they loved it. Then they scooted in themselves, rubbing their
hands.
"We'll reap a windfall here!" they snickered. "Money is
money. We're not burdened by archaic Cold War attitudes! We're not influenced by
crude McCarthyism like those yahoo Americans! We're not hag-ridden by that
obnoxious Cuban-American lobby! Yippeee! Let's ROOOLLLL!"
Here's the windfall for those shrewd investors:
"Cuba stopped payment on ALL its foreign commercial and bilateral debt
with non-socialist countries in 1986." (U.S. International Trade Commission
Report, 2001)
"Debt talks between Cuba and the Paris Club of creditor nations are on
hold. ... [O]n the table was $3.8 billion of official debt to Paris Club
members, part of a much larger debt Cuba ran up through the 1980s, until it
began to DEFAULT on payments and then stopped talking with creditors. ..."
(Reuters, June 2001, author's emphasis)
And remember, folks, back then Cuba was getting $5 billion a year from the
Soviet sugar daddy.
So what happened to that debt, you ask? Well, Fidel repudiated it, too. "Soviet
Union?" he frowns. "What Soviet Union? Where is this Soviet Union?"
No country by that name anymore, right? So how can he owe it any money? True
story. Johnnie Cochran and Al Dershowitz couldn't shine this man's shoes.
'A Great New Marketplace!'
The momentum for the long-awaited opening with Cuba is mounting, my friends.
And I have some advice: Hide your wallets. But that's only if you're a poor
chump taxpayer. If you're an Archer Midland Daniels exec chummy with the Ex-Im
Bank, brighten up.
We're hearing a lot about how business hype from Enron, from the dot.coms,
blinded investors to reality. You watch – the people lining up to trade
with Cuba, who blissfully shake the Maximum Leader's hand, will make Enron
investors look positively clairvoyant.
The Houston Business Chronicle calls Castro's Cuba "a great new
marketplace!" That's even funnier than what they were saying about Enron
just a year ago.
Illinois Governor Ryan, a Republican, just led a huge delegation of farmers,
businessmen and assorted capitalists over there, including ADM and Cargill
officers. None forgot their knee pads. But wait! Did I say capitalists? Please
excuse me.
A genuine capitalist takes risks. But because of something called the
Export-Import Bank, there's no risk whatsoever in exporting to bankrupt,
murderous and kleptocratic regimes. Worse, there is no incentive for the
kleptocrats to clean up their act, as would happen under a genuine free market.
Yep, get some Ex-Im coverage and a U.S. businessman would incur more of a
risk selling to Switzerland than to thrice-bankrupted Cuba!
(Full disclosure: It's obvious why I have it in for Fidel. I also have it in
for the Ex-Im Bank. They were once my competition. I sold a private-sector
version of what they provide. It's called "export-credit insurance." A
U.S. company exporting to a foreign company buys a policy that indemnifies it if
the foreign company defaults or refuses to pay.
Sadly, my employers relied on profits for operating capital. They actually
evaluated the risk and charged accordingly. My competitors extorted their
operating capital from U.S. citizens with the threat of jail. The skunk who sold
Ex-Im policies simply followed me around, snickering, and offered another quote.
It was hopeless.
All salesmen like the rough and tumble of competition, but you talk about a
handicap! No matter how old the brandy, no matter how skillful and conscientious
the lap dancer, I usually lost the deal. The Ex-Im charged peanuts for premiums
and covered the most outrageous risks in the most kleptocratic countries.
You and I make good on the billions in claims. Their spokespersons claim
that the Ex-Im doesn't compete with private insurance. Hogwash! I saw it
repeatedly.)
Now, does anyone halfway sober think that Archer Daniels Midland (prominent
in every delegation to Cuba in the last five years) is any less politically
connected than Enron?
Enron's connections got it (among other things) an electrical plant built in
a losing market in India with Ex-Im financing. That'll be pocket change compared
to what ADM will get in Cuba. Mark my words. It's coming.
I read recently how ADM execs consider the current restrictions on Cuba
trade "too onerous."
And what are these "restrictions" for ADM, which sells food?
Forget what you hear from Fidel and his American echo chamber about an "embargo,"
much less a "blockade." Instead, actually study the diluted version in
force today.
For companies like ADM and Cargill this embargo simply amounts to this: No
Ex-Im financing of any deal with the current rulers of Cuba. In other words, no
taxpayer bailout for politically connected millionaires entering into boneheaded
business deals with known deadbeats and thieves.
Currently, ADM is perfectly free to sell Castro whatever it wants. But
because of the nefarious machinations and subterfuges of the dreaded "Miami
Mafia," the U.S. taxpayer will not be left holding the bag.
Yes, folks, getting paid by customers is now considered an "onerous"
burden for a big, sophisticated and politically connected company! Boy, I must
still be way "inside the box" in my business thinking. Kenny Boy and
Skilling would shut me up fast. "You just don't get it!" They'd sneer.
Right. I tend to frown and ask inconvenient questions when whiz kids explain
their ingenious and "outside the box" financing deals. I frown harder
when I see them cozying up to flagrant burglars.
Wringing the Golden Goose's Neck
Cuba is bankrupt because of the people in charge. These vermin took over a
country with a higher standard of living than Belgium and Italy in 1959, with a
trade surplus, with the Cuban peso equal to the U.S. dollar, with net
immigration and ... well, you know the rest.
Why on earth would these same looters and cutthroats turn it around when the
system has served them so splendidly for 43 years?! Remember, Mao croaked before
change came to China. Brezhnev croaked, too. But there's no Cuban version of
Deng or Gorbachev in power ... yet.
What conceivable incentive would turn the current Cuban nomenklatura into
capitalists overnight? Huh, Mr. Dodd?! Huh, Gov. Ryan?! Huh, ADM and Cargill
executives?!
Don't answer. I know the answer. You don't give a damn about that. It's
irrelevant. The way things are moving, the U.S. taxpayer will soon make good on
Castro's thievery through a larcenous farce called the Ex-Im Bank.
Unlike Enron's new executives, who need new investors and customers, Cuba's
executives have no incentive whatsoever to turn it around. Fidel doesn't have to
steal directly any more, or even use spies. He's got ADM execs doing his bidding
in Washington's ritziest circles.
Cuba is still Maoist to the core. When they were desperate, when foreign
capital started drying up in the early '90s, a small crack appeared in the
system, like Lenin's NEP (New Economic Policy). This allowed a few tiny
businesses to open.
But as more dollars have flowed into Cuba – contrary to what Sens. Dodd
and Serrano assure us – the number of private enterprises has actually
shrunk.
"Recent [Cuban] government actions indicate that official attitudes
toward economic reform may have soured. ... Increased obstacles to private
sector activities and restrictions to foreign direct investments reveal
heightened concerns about the loss of political control inherent in the economic
reform process." (Moody's Investors Service, July 2001)
Fidel is no fool. In fact, he agrees with us: Private sector activity will
indeed imperil his rule. He knows that better than anyone, so he will never
permit it.
"But he won't be able to control it," you retort. "He'll be
swept away by the invisible hand ... etc. ... etc."
Sounds great on paper, but you're forgetting something: Remember, Fidel
inherited a vibrant free-market economy in 1959 (something unique among
communist rulers). All the others – from Lenin to Mao to Uncle Ho to
Ulbricht to Tito to Kim Il Sung – took over primitive and/or chaotic,
war-ravaged economies.
Fidel had a golden goose land in his lap – and he wrung its neck. He
deliberately and methodically wrecked Latin America's premier economy. There was
no "mismanagement" or "bungling" involved.
Cuba's people are poor not because of "mismanagement" by the
rulers. Indeed, considering these rulers' goal of total power, the Cuban economy
is expertly managed, as was Russia's in the '30s.
Capitalism didn't sweep him away or even co-opt him. He swept it away. He's
not Deng or Gorbachev. This is a different animal.
Castro's Lust for Power
There was a definite method to his madness. He could have easily left most
of Cuba's economy in place, made it obedient to his whims, and been a Peron, a
Franco, a Mussolini.
He could have grabbed half and been a Tito.
He could have demanded a piece of the action from all involved and been a
Marcos, a Somoza, a Mobutu, a Suharto. But this wasn't enough for him.
Castro lusted for the power of a Stalin or a Mao. And he got it – in
spades. And there simply will be no loss of political control as long as he is
alive. Get that through your heads. History is made not by theoretical "systems"
or "historical forces" but by humans, by individuals subject to ego
and greed and sadism.
Fidel didn't just murder scores of his original revolutionary chums, he
gloated in the fact, like Stalin, and often insisted on watching the execution,
like Hitler.
The Cuban Revolution "devoured its own children" more hideously
than the French. An American named William Morgan was among the most chilling
cases.
Willie was an AWOL GI with creditors and ex-wives on his tail who fled to
Cuba and wound up a commandante in Castro's rebel army in 1959. He soured on the
revolution when the unmistakably Red pattern emerged.
Castro heard about it through spies and clamped Morgan in prison. He visited
him one day. "Kneel and beg for your life," taunted Gov. Ryan's
charming cuddle bunny.
"F*** You!" Willie snarled back. " I kneel before NO man!"
An hour later Willie was bound, blindfolded and facing the firing squad, but
they weren't aiming at his face and chest as usual.
"FUEGO!!" The bullets slammed into Willie's knees. He crumpled to
the ground snarling and writhing in agony. "See, I made you kneel,"
said a voice somewhere above him. The next shot hit Willie's right shoulder,
long seconds later another slammed into his left shoulder. Then another into his
legs. Willie lay there bleeding, writhing and moaning for long minutes.
"POW!" Finally a massive .45 slug to the head ended Willie
Morgan's agony.
And if this sounds like just the sort of story an "embittered exile
with an ax to grind" would make up, I urge you to read it for yourselves.
It's in a book titled "The Losers" by Paul Bethell, former press
attache in the (pro-Castro, incidentally) U.S. Embassy in 1959.
Next time Fidel's grandfatherly smile warms your cockles, next time his cute
whiskers tickle your cheek, you might want to remember people like Morgan. But
multiply it by 20,000. We're dealing with a serious sicko here, my friends –
a sadist, psychopath, thief and megalomaniac.
Humberto Fontova is the author of "The Helldiver's Rodeo,"
described as "required reading" by Barry Farber, "Just what the
doctor ordered for those seeking to live life to the fullest!" by Ted
Nugent, and "an orgy of political incorrectness" by the New Orleans
Times Picayune. Since the book's release last summer, the author has appeared on
Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" twice and is booked again for
March 14.
E-mail Mr. Fontova at hfontova@earthlink.net
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