In Antwort auf:

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Cuba's new 'growth' rate fails to cure old problems

By Marc Frank
The Economist
Financial Times

After 46 years in power, Fidel Castro, Cuba's president, is known to play only by his own rules. Even so, his recent move to disregard the standard formula for gross domestic product - the world's standard measurement of an economy's growth - has confounded both economists and ordinary Cubans.

The move to declare GDP a capitalist instrument has been brewing for the past year, after José Luis Rodriguez, the economy and planning minister, called GDP a tool designed to measure growth in market economies - and useless as far as Cuba was concerned.

He reiterated the point in his year-end economic report to the national assembly. "Health and education are included if they come with a price, but not if they are provided free," he said.

According to Mr Rodriguez, Cuba's 2.6 per cent annual growth in 2003 was actually 3.8 per cent when taking into account Cuba's free healthcare and education.

This year Mr Rodriguez simply declared that growth was up 5 per cent, based on the adjusted method.

Economy ministry sources said that with the conventional GDP formula, growth was actually 2.8 per cent to 3 per cent.

Experts have found Cuba's economy increasingly difficult to decipher. Since 2001, a drop in tourism and five hurricanes slowed Cuba's recovery from a 1990s post-Soviet economic crisis.

The government acknowledges a worsening foreign exchange shortage, due to shrinking credit and investment, a hostile US administration, high oil and shipping costs, hurricanes and drought.

Cuba is dependent on fuel and food imports. Its current account has operated in the red since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, its chief benefactor.

The country, considered one of the world's worst credit risks, is not a member of any international lending organisation.

The new growth measurement formula could further hurt Cuba's credibility and increase suspicion the economy is not doing well.

"GDP percentages are meant to compare performance, so if you start using other formulas, and don't give the calculations, you make the comparison impossible," a European diplomat said, "which means they most likely have something awful to hide."

Cuba's reserves have always been a well-guarded secret. The central bank has provided no foreign debt or current account information since 2001, when debt stood at $11bn. The latest detailed trade and production statistics date to 2002. Results from a much-publicised 2002 census have never been released. Budget information is provided only in pesos, although an important percentage of domestic spending is in hard currency.

According to local economists, since recovery began in 1994 economic growth has averaged 3.7 per cent and less in recent years - not nearly enough to upgrade deteriorating infrastructure.

Cuba today is in the grip of its worst drought in 63 years. Hundreds of thousands of people rely on water trucks to survive, and agriculture has suffered huge damage. But drought is only part of the problem: 30 per cent of pumped water is lost between reservoir and consumer. The National Institute of Hydraulic Resources reported $400m was needed to upgrade Havana's century-old waterworks, as well as $1.2bn for the rest of Cuba.

Many Cubans were puzzled by news of 5 per cent growth. The state employs 90 per cent of workers and monopolises retail activity. In Cuba's dual monetary system, government exchanges offer 27 pesos to the US dollar, while the convertible peso trades on par with the dollar.

The average monthly income is 345 pesos. Cooking oil, extra milk, juice, pasta, soap and detergents all cost up to a week's wages, and such "luxury" goods as decent clothes and household appliances require weeks of labour, if not months or years.

A government report seen by the FT said peso prices increased by 3 per cent, but gave no overall figure. The government raised prices at its dollar shops an average 15.4 per cent in May. Also last May, the US made it more difficult for Cuban-Americans to visit Cuba and supplement family incomes.

"The reports at the National Assembly were very optimistic because this year was very hard," a transportation worker in central Camaguey province said. "For months I have had no running water at home and for a number of months the blackouts would not let us live in peace. Government prices keep going up, but my government wage remains the same."

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@ Jemen

wie immer total daneben.

Das Perverse an der Geschichte ist doch, dass der Politiker-Despot Castro versucht, fachlich-wissenschaftliche Konventionen und Erkenntnisse zu ignorieren und die wissenschaftliche "Darstellung" von Fakten "frei" für seine Zwecke zu instrumentalisieren.

Da werden neue "Castro'sche" Definitionen von BIP vorgenommen ,aber keinem Dritten zur Verfügung gestellt, der sie ja möglicherweise überprüfen können.

Es ist der totalitäre Anspruch, die Wirklichkeit deformieren zu können - unabhängig von den tatsächliche Fakten.

man vergleiche hierzu den bizarren Versuch der Nazis die Naturwissenschaft zu ideologisieren: Die "Deutsche" Physik

In Antwort auf:

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Die Deutsche Physik, so der Titel eines vierbändigen Grundlagenwerkes zur Physik aus dem Jahre 1936 von Philipp Lenard, wurde in Anschlag gebracht gegen eine sich ausbreitende vermeintlich jüdische Physik. Wenige Jahre nach der Erscheinung von Lenards Werk gaben die beiden Physiker Wilhelm Müller und Johannes Stark ein Heftchen mit dem Titel ’Jüdische und Deutsche Physik’ heraus. Wetterte Lenard im Vorwort seiner Deutschen Physik gegen die Relativitätstheorie, so lässt Stark in seinem Beitrag an der Quantentheorie kein gutes Haar. Lenard ereifert sich in seinem Vorwort dazu, den Juden jedes Verständnis von Wahrheit abzusprechen und sie als ungeeignet für die wissenschaftliche "Wirklichkeitsbegründung und Wahrheitssuche" zu halten. Ihre Unfähigkeit zu wissenschaftlichem Denken verdeckten die Juden glänzend hinter undurchsichtigen Rechenkünsten. Diese Rechenkünste von abgehobenem Geiste schrieb Stark einer dogmatischen Physik zu, die im Gegensatz zur pragmatischen Physik nur ein geringes Interesse an der Erfahrung habe und sich in abstrakten Theoriegebäuden häuslich bequem einrichtete. Wohingegen die pragmatische Physik die harte und geduldige Laborarbeit nicht scheue und jede Hypothese dem strengen Test einer Beobachtung unterziehe. Derart verwandt in der wissenschaftlichen Auffassung publizierten die beiden Nobelpreisträger im Jahr 1924 einen Aufsatz unter dem Titel "Hitlergeist und Wissenschaft", in dem sie der Hoffnung Ausdruck verliehen, mit der nationalsozialistischen Bewegung werde auch in Deutschlands Universitäten ein neuer Geist einziehen. Lange vor und nach dieser Publikation entspann sich ein ausgedehnter Briefwechsel zwischen Stark und Lenard, aus dem Kleinert ausschöpfend berichtete.

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@ Pitty

ich muss Herrn Castro gratulieren:

Wer solche Freunde (bzw. Anhänger) hat, braucht keine Feinde mehr.