Few things can irk Cuba's president, Fidel Castro, more than the fact that the greenback, the ultimate symbol of the global power of his arch-enemy, the United States, is also a mainstay of his own country's economy. And therefore few things can have satisfied him more than announcing this week, just days after a humiliating fall in which he fractured his knee and arm, that from November 8th, the dollar will no longer be legal for commercial transactions. Cubans will still be able to keep dollars and to swap them for "convertible pesos"-equal in value, but thoroughly unconvertible anywhere outside Cuba-but they will pay a 10% commission.
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