No stimulus, no problem

Since 2013, Banque du Liban (BDL), Lebanon’s central bank, has announced over $6 billion in annual stimulus packages to prop up the country’s faltering economy. A range of sectors, from energy to education, have benefited from stimulus-facilitated credit, but none more so than the real estate market. Year after year, property developers and consumers have…… Read More

What’s the deal with garbage decentralization?

Over the past 10 years, the government has attempted and failed to implement plan after plan to end the country’s smoldering trash crisis. With each iteration, politicians criticize government inaction, while disagreeing on what to do with and where to put the garbage. On January 11, Lebanon took another swing at resolving this impasse, when…… Read More

Mother Lebanon

Beirut is depicted as a woman by many renowned artists, like Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali, who—during the 1982 Israeli invasion—drew a caricature of his iconic character Handala offering a flower through a hole in the wall to a woman that he named Beirut. She is the patient carrier of our painful history, she is the…… Read More