Harry Belafonte has grudgingly decided to support President Obama’s reelection because he believes Mitt Romney will bring in an era of “unbridled capitalism.”

“If unbridled capitalism prevails with the current electoral process, and Mitt Romney makes it, then I think we’re in for a terrible, terrible future,” Belafonte told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. “If he doesn’t make it, then I think we have a chance to look at the democratic institutions and be more sensitive to poverty, women’s issues, children, etc.”

The optimism about Obama apparent at the end of that statement must have recently returned to Belafonte. “I am very cautious of the fact of those who thinks that [Obama] has some hidden agenda and that if only he could be given a second term for us to see the new light, new things will be revealed,” the singer said on PBS in January. “I just don’t trust that . . . I think if there was the kind of moral compass serving Barack Obama in the way we had all hoped, the moral force would have helped him make choices.”

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But Belafonte never indicated that his disappointment with Obama might turn him Republican this year. Instead, he criticized black Republicans.

“The Republican party, the tea party, all those forces to the extreme right have consistently tried to come up with representations for what they call black, what they call the real Negroes,” Belafonte told CNN, citing Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice. “They’re heroes for some people. But for a lot of us, they’re not. Herman Cain is just the latest incarnation of what is totally false for the needs of our community and the needs of our nation. I think he’s a bad apple.”