From FOX News:
Cuba's $6B debt to Americans for seized properties hangs over US talks
A $6 billion sticking point could create headaches for the U.S.-Cuba talks.
Though concerns over human rights, press freedoms and U.S. fugitives living free on the island have dominated debate over the Obama administration's negotiations on restoring diplomatic ties, the Castro regime also still owes Americans that eye-popping sum.
The $6 billion figure represents the value of all the assets seized from thousands of U.S. citizens and businesses after the Cuban revolution in 1959. With the United States pressing forward on normalizing relations with the communist country, some say the talks must resolve these claims.
These claims are quite legitimate - a bit more:
Over nearly 6,000 claims by American citizens and corporations have been certified by the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, totaling $1.9 billion.
Today, with interest and in today's dollars, that amount is close to $6 billion.
U.S. sugar, mineral, telephone and electric company losses were heavy. Oil refineries were taken from energy giants like Texaco and Exxon. Coca-Cola was forced to leave bottling plants behind. Goodyear and Firestone lost tire factories, and major chains like Hilton handed over once-profitable real estate for nothing in return.
Cuba has no money - it only survived because Russia didn't want it to fail. Russia wanted to export Communism into South America and it set up Cuba as a Potemkin State to demonstrate how wonderful the workers paradise was. Now that the Russian experiment has failed, Cuba no longer has a sugar-daddy. The Castro brothers are the usual third-world kleptocrats, not revolutionary idealists. Ideas so great they have to be mandetory...
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