Gekko

BY NOW we’re heard from almost everybody—that is to say, every political analyst—about Fidel Castro and his appearance in New York at the UN anniversary. But what does Mr. Market have to say about the future of Cuba? Well, there is a fitful trade in post-revolutionary Cuban debt. Castro & Co. borrowed about $8 billion—none ofitinU.S. dollars—before getting shut out of the market in the early Eighties. All those narrow-minded U.S. Administrations that maintained the embargo saved American banks a lot of money, because there hasn’t been any interest paid on the debt in more than a decade. The last time there was an attempt to work out a restructuring was in 1985, and it failed.

Cuba’s international banking nanny is Credit Lyonnais, which acts as the agent bank for the biggest chunk of Cuban debt. Credit Lyonnais, you may recall, has beaten off all challengers for the title of Most Disastrously Run French State-Owned Bank. After it was unable to revive Cuba’s creditworthiness in 1985, the price of the country’s paper sank and sank, bottoming at 2 or 3 cents on the dollar in 1991.

JD

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John Dizard

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BY NOW we’re heard from almost everybody—that is to say, every political analyst—about Fidel Castro and his appearance in New York at the UN anniversary. But what does Mr. Market have to say about the future of Cuba? Well, there is a fitful trade in post-revolutionary Cuban debt. Castro & Co. borrowed about $8 billion—none ofitinU.S. dollars—before getting shut out of the market in the early Eighties. All those narrow-minded U.S. Administrations that maintained the embargo saved American banks a lot of money, because there hasn’t been any interest paid on the debt in more than a decade. The last time there was an attempt to work out a restructuring was in 1985, and it failed.

Cuba’s international banking nanny is Credit Lyonnais, which acts as the agent bank for the biggest chunk of Cuban debt. Credit Lyonnais, you may recall, has beaten off all challengers for the title of Most Disastrously Run French State-Owned Bank. After it was unable to revive Cuba’s creditworthiness in 1985, the price of the country’s paper sank and sank, bottoming at 2 or 3 cents on the dollar in 1991.