Free market in Cuba?

Once again, the MSM shows that it  is either incapable of, or refuses to report about Cuba within the realm of reality.  The AP headline   reads, “Cuba embraces 2 surprising free-market decrees.” 

Either the AP writer is deliberately obscuring the facts, or is ignorant of basic economic principles.  “Free Market”, simply defined is, ” business governed by the laws of supply and demand, not restrained by government interference, regulation or subsidy.”  Considering the well-known fact that in Cuba, for a half-century, all international economic trade has been controlled by the state, you’d think that AP writers would be up to speed by now.  Perhaps AP’s Havana bureau personnel are too busy drinking mojitos with Cuban “government” elites.

Excerpt:

HAVANA — Cuba has issued a pair of surprising free-market decrees, allowing foreign investors to lease government land for up to 99 years — potentially touching off a golf-course building boom — and loosening state controls on commerce to let islanders grow and sell their own fruit and vegetables.

The moves, published into law in the Official Gazette on Thursday and Friday and effective immediately, are significant steps as President Raul Castro promises to scale back the communist state’s control of the economy while attempting to generate new revenue for a government short on cash.

“These are part of the opening that the government wants to make given the country’s situation,” said Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a state-trained economist who is now an anti-communist dissident.

Cuba said it was modifying its property laws “with the aim of amplifying and facilitating” foreign investment in tourism and that doing so would provide “better security and guarantees to the foreign investor.”