Pallí: The loans are coming!

Here's a good assessment of Cuba's new real estate and loan provisions from José Manuel Pallí (H/T EthnoCuba).

"The Loans Are Coming" - The Cuba Standard

"A sip of chamomile tea to go with the Valium."

Since Cuba published the recent changes to its housing laws allowing resident citizens to sell their homes, the talk in Miami — especially among those who feel an urgent call to give a negative spin to any news from Cuba — has turned around questions like, 'Where are the home sellers going to live?'

So when I heard about Cuba's new lending system, while waiting in line for the doors to one of our glorious bazars to open up this abbreviated Thanksgiving Day, the first thought that came to my mind was we now had yet another reason to worry: Where will those Cubans who lose their homes to the bank go?

Of course, the geography around me helped dispel most of my own concerns: Here we are, in Miami — a city which has a legitimate claim to be the natural host for our next reality TV show, 'Foreclose America,' in a state of Florida where our courts of law are hooked to a life support system dependent on foreclosure filing fees, where jobs are ever more scarce, and yet nobody is deprived of his/her constitutional right to shop, maxed credit card or not. And obviously, they must have some place to keep all this new stuff they are buying — with even some space to spare for a bed or sleeping bag.

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