Lebanon's Economic Implosion

At LAT, "Lebanon’s people line up in ‘queues of humiliation’ as their country unravels":

BEIRUT — Fill ’er up? Be ready to wait in line at least an hour — assuming the gas station is open, that is. Need medication? Something as basic as aspirin could set you on a daylong hunt from pharmacy to pharmacy.

Even a grocery run is an ever-accelerating race against ballooning prices and a failing currency. And whatever you do, you’ll need to time it around power cuts that can last up to 23 hours a day.

This is life in Lebanon these days, where a 21-month-long, government-engineered economic implosion — the World Bank calls it “a deliberate depression” — has transformed everyday tasks into a gantlet of fuel, power, water, medicine and basic goods shortages that residents dub tawabeer al-thul, or “queues of humiliation.”

Those lines stretched long this week as the country geared up to celebrate Eid al-Adha, a festival during which Muslims sacrifice a sheep to commemorate Abraham almost sacrificing his son Ismail at God’s command. With the Lebanese lira’s street value down to less than 10% of its official value against the dollar, it’s a ritual few can afford.

“Every month it’s getting worse, so long as the dollar [rate] gets worse,” said Abbass Ismail, a 37-year-old computer repairman trudging home from Beirut’s Sabra market on the eve of Eid.

“This cost 100,000 lira,” he said, looking down at his four stuffed grocery bags. At the official exchange rate, that would have been $66. In reality, it’s about $4.50. Even then, “not everyone has this kind of money to spend. I don’t think there’s Eid. It’s only Eid for the haves.”

It was little better across town in Hamra, an upscale neighborhood with a usually bustling shopping thoroughfare.

“The days when people used to buy in large amounts, that’s gone,” said Sarah, an employee at a traditional sweets shop, who gave only her first name. The store had extended its hours to allow for Eid shoppers, she said, “but even if we stay open till 3 a.m., it won’t matter.”

The international community spoke vaguely of corruption but continued to pour aid into Lebanon with little regard for how it was spent. Girding everything was a once-inviolable currency peg that kept the lira at 1,507.50 to the greenback.

By 2019, after years of so-called financial engineering by Lebanon’s central bank — which tried to lure dollars from abroad with astronomical interest rates, in what critics likened to a Ponzi scheme — and a series of crises that constricted the flow of dollars into the country, the system crashed...

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