Can you imagine what it’s like to collect a bill from Castro?

The guy defaults all the time, he owes about $6 billion in defaulted loans to banks all over the world, if I recall correctly. For some reason, though, Swiss banks have continued to do business with the Cuban government, perhaps because that’s where the Castro fortune is stashed.

Well, they aren’t anymore. Val at Babalu, citing Child Of The Revolution (an excellent blog) has the scoop on the reason why:

“it costs too much to ensure that Cuba respects and conforms to legal and financial regulations”

Hear that? It costs too much to keep Castro honest. The markets see no reason to give him a subsidy for his bad behavior.

What I want to know is what took them so long. I’d like to know how much they lost from this dictator and which customers had to make up the loss on UBS’s and Credit Suisse’s bottom lines. As economists say, there is no free lunch.

The other interesting ponderable is the impact of this on Cuba’s finances. This may well make Cuba more dependent than ever on Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Or the Chinese, who merrily allow the Castro brothers to launder their investments there. Ziva at Blog for Cuba notes that this comes right at the very tail end of Castro’s regime.

All of this could have implications on how Cuba democratizes and what kind of resistance they meet up with. If Chavez and the Chinese don’t come through, Castro may be up a crik and out of money. If that happens, it won’t take long for his odious regime to collapse into the ash heap it’s already headed for.