Mike Azar
@AzarsTweets • 21,824 subscribers
Commentator on Lebanon’s never-ending financial crisis. International structured and project finance.
Videos
Blubay Batroun hired thugs to *illegally* restrict public access to the beach using violence and intimidation. I was walking on the beach, minding my business, when Blubay guards tried to block my path. They became violent when I refused to obey. More context in the thread below
Mike Azar215,348 Aufrufe • vor 3 Jahren
This statement by Riad Salame did not get enough attention yesterday, and the interviewer didn’t even realize what was being said. RS is saying that the old dollar deposits in the Lebanese banking system are originally LBP deposits that were converted to USD at some point in the chain. Therefore, the solution for these dollars is “different” than it would be for “fresh” dollar deposits brought in from outside Lebanon. In other words, his solution is that all of the old dollar deposits should be returned to their owners in full but… in their original value of 1500 LBP to USD, and not in real dollars as they weren’t real dollars to begin with. That was BDL’s plan all along. They convinced people over the last 20 years that by converting their deposit to USD in the bank (or accepting others USD deposit for payments etc), they now had dollars and were safe. The objective was to convince people not to convert their LBP into real dollars (eg real dollar bills or transfers outside Lebanon), which would have caused the currency collapse years earlier. So they pulled a psychological trick on them by giving them dollar IOUs that they never intended to honor. Add decades of accrued interest on top of that and the debt became gigantic. It is not practical today to distinguish between the two sources of dollar deposits for the most part.
Mike Azar38,478 Aufrufe • vor 8 Monaten
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