The U.S. trade embargo against communist Cuba is frequently criticized, and with some good arguments, as an ineffective instrument against the Cuban dictator.

But there’s more than one reason for this embargo, and Castro’s attitude toward paying his bills has a lot to do with why it’s in place too.

Naturally, you ask yourself, why should anyone care whether Castro pays his bills? After all, if someone is going to be dumb enough to extend him credit and he doesn’t pay, why should it concern the rest of us?

The reason is this: international trade is almost all insured by the governments of creditor countries, including even the U.S., through a little-known government entity called the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, (OPIC), and through the Export-Import Bank, (ExImBank).

So, when Castro runs out on his tab, it’s the U.S. taxpayers who pick it up.

As a libertarian, I don’t like this system, I think buyers and sellers should assume their own risks with no government involvement. But the reason it exists, so these officials have told me, is that every other country has them. So, to not extend the insurance to U.S. companies while French and Italian and Spanish and English companies have it, amounts to an unfair trade advantage.

The other reason, I suppose, is that if Uncle Sam pays to pick up after the mess when a tinpot leader like Hugo Chavez confiscates some oil field, it probably reduces traffic from K-Street seeking to find support to go invade a place, after these property rights are violated. Just a theory.

Anyway, it turns out that Castro is as bad a credit risk as your average pirate of the Caribbean, and regularly skips out on his bills, only to be awarded more credit from different enablers. Whom he then promptly stiffs, too.

The $15.4 billion catalogue of all Castro’s unpaid bills has finally been assembled for the first time by a Miami research institute. My what a big tab you have, Senor Castro!

Scroll down past the purple picture of Castro on The Real Cuba and read the whole thing here.