“If the best economists have everything clear, why do the opposite?”

MIAMI, United States. – The official Cuban media journalist and former president of the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) in Matanzas Yirmara Torres Hernández posted on Facebook harsh criticism of the recent measure of the Cuban government which again establishes the acceptance of dollars in banking entities on the Island.

He also questioned why economic decisions are made that seem to go against the wisdom of experts in the field. “If the best economists have everything clear, why don’t they listen to them? Why do the opposite?” he wondered.

Torres Hernández comments how the measure to stop accepting dollars in the state financial system complicated the lives of Cubans and how, despite this, dollars in cash continued to enter the country. “The truth of the truth is that the banks lost the financial monopoly in Cuba… that is what the street has, the real economy…”, he expressed.

The journalist specified that she was not against Cuban banks now accepting deposits in dollars again. “I was against them stopping accepting them and making life more complicated for all of us mortals, just because a brainy person believed that this way they would better circumvent the blockade,” she said.

In his publication, he also recalled the words of the late economist Fidel Roche, a banking veteran with more than 37 years of experience in the sector, who criticized the measure of not accepting more dollars in banks, announced in June 2021, noting that freely convertible currency (MLC) stores were an “anti-popular” measure. Roche also predicted that the economic reorganization it would not improve the lives of Cubans.

In addition, Torres Hernández regrets that the ideas and diagnoses of the best economists are not listened to and applied in practice. According to her, bureaucracy and mediocrity prevail in decision-making, while inconvenient truths and economic laws are ignored in favor of what sounds good to the ears of politicians.

“As long as uncomfortable truths are not heard and accepted, nothing will improve,” warned the journalist. Likewise, she made a call not to take desperate measures and not to depend on world charity. In her opinion, politics cannot continue to be the priority, since without a strong economy, no policy will succeed.

“The economy is a living entity… and it cannot be controlled just like that, with a magic wand, by saying, now I close, now I open,” the journalist wrote. “That is a utopia. The people in Cuba need to survive and the economy will develop from that survival… outside the law and whatever,” she added.

Later, he emphasized that Cubans need to develop the economy. “Today our economy, I am sorry to say, is a ship adrift… and the damn fault lies with those who do not understand that without an economy this country is going nowhere… and that whoever suffers, in the end, is the people…” .

“And this Revolution,” he said, “exists for the people to live better. That is the meaning, the people. If the ultimate goal of a measure is not for the people to improve, but to really improve, not to receive crumbs that allow them to live badly, what are we talking about?, what are we defending? “He finished.