Cubans allowed to buy New cars for the first time in 50 years, shocked at Ferrari prices like $250,000 for a Family Sedan

For the first time in more than 50 years, the Cuban government began selling new and used vehicles last week to anyone with the money to buy one. And as crowds gathered at state-owned car lots in Havana to check out the inventory, a consensus quickly emerged.

The cars on sale had either been priced by callous, greedy idiots, or the Cuban government had become the most incompetent automobile retailer in the world.

How else to explain 2013 Peugeot sedans priced at more than $250,000 — seven or eight times their retail value in Europe? Or used vehicles like a 2010 Volkswagen Passat offered at $70,000? Even Chinese-made Geelys — some of the world’s cheapest cars — are listed at more than $30,000, somehow increasing in value after absorbing years of abuse as tourist rentals on Cuba’s pothole-rotted roads.All of this is especially baffling in a country with miserable public transportation and average state salaries stuck at $20 a month.

Cuba's Communist-run government traditionally has placed huge markups on retail goods and services paid for with hard currency, a policy that amounts to a tax on people who can afford such goods. The practice applies to everything from dried pasta, to household appliances, to Internet access.