CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Thursday that his close friend Fidel Castro predicted the fall of the U.S. dollar.
Chavez said Cuba’s 81-year-old former president mentioned the prediction some time ago before signs of a weakening dollar had begun to appear.
“Fidel told me one day, ‘Chavez, it won’t be long before the crisis of the dollar occurs,’ ” the Venezuelan leader said in a televised speech.
Chavez said Castro handed him a document he had written during one of their meetings in Havana that said “the United States has bought half the world with paper bills that don’t have real backing. . . . The world can’t sustain that bubble.”
Said Chavez: “I think if things continue on like this in the United States, we’ll have to start preparing to receive the refugees here.”
