Balance sheets

For the past half century, the Castro brothers have lived on debt ... and now we have the figures to prove it.

The Paris Club, which represents public and private financial institutions in the West that provide credit to nations around the world, has just released a list of its debtors, which you can read here.

It’s a first for the Club, which was founded in the mid 1950s as an “informal” grouping of creditors.

According to the figures, members of the Club are owed a total of USD330 billion, with the biggest debtor being Indonesia, which owes a grand total of USD36.2 billion. Seems like a lot but then again, Indonesia has a population of about 235 million.

Guess who is second on the list? That’s right: Cuba.

As at 1 September this year, the Castro regime owed members of the Club a whooping USD29.7 billion. Which is a nice round figure for a nation of just over 11 million.

Keep in mind that these are debts owed to capitalist creditors (yes, those nasty imperialists), and do not take into account the billions owed by Cuba to the old Soviet Union, which effectively bankrolled Havana for three decades at a rate estimated back then to be about USD1 million a day.

And while we are pretty confident that countries such as Indonesia are working hard to clear what they owe, the Castro regime has demonstrated time and again that it has absolutely no intention of repaying any of its debts.

In other words, they have maxed their credit card. They are broke.

Or to put it another way, if Cuba was a household, the repo man would have been sent in a long time ago.