Word: barter
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...worst is yet to come. Cuba relies on the East bloc for about 90% of its imports and exports. This trade is based mainly on barter, not cash, and on terms heavily skewed in Cuba's favor: the Soviets, for example, buy Cuban sugar at about four times the market price. But as East bloc countries move toward free-market economies, they are seriously reassessing their ties with Cuba, which cannot pay in the hard currency that Western customers offer...
...paths to reform, most countries in the region stand to gain if Czechoslovakia's effort to revamp or abolish Comecon makes any headway at the organization's meeting in Sofia this week. Since intra-bloc commerce claims an average of 70% of each country's trade, replacing the noncompetitive barter system with bilateral, hard-currency agreements could free industries to turn their attention to non-Comecon nations. Historically, the Comecon system has encouraged inefficiency, low-quality production and poor planning. "It made each country in the bloc more anxious to consume than to produce," says Hans-Heinz Kopietz...
...Eastern Europe's main problems is concealed inflation: too much money chasing too few goods. West Germany's remarkable postwar recovery was based on a brutal currency reform that in 1948, under Allied military government, destroyed all savings and, by restoring the scarcity value of money, ended the barter economy. Eastern Europe suffers from another economic distortion: the incestuous trade patterns that are a legacy of the Stalinist years. Trade under Comecon, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, was based on a curious reverse mercantilism: the imperial country (the Soviet Union) supplied energy and raw materials that the colonies...
...resolution endorsing plans to allow Lithuania and Estonia to manage their own economies freely, outside the control of central planners in Moscow. Baltic economists say they intend to develop Western-style market economies similar to those in Scandinavia, based on light industry and agriculture and free to sell or barter with other Soviet republics or foreign countries...
Part two: Barter with terrorists for an exchange of their hostages for yours...