It has been documented beyond any question that when it comes to discussions of the outlook for the future, bankers are no more endowed with privileged knowledge or exclusive insights than the next best economist or fortune teller. The caveat against clairvoyance has been enforced in 2015, in no insignificant form, by the frantic performances of analysts and investors in their behavioral reactions to the yearlong grotesque search for the right moment to raise interest rates in the world’s – still – largest economy. As the fallouts of the global uncertainty over America’s interest rate normalization are tapering out in the year’s waning weeks, Lebanese banks look to the regional future with sanguine humors interspersed with calculated expectations of more-of-the-same-as-2015 for the domestic economy. Salim Sfeir, chairman of Bank of Beirut, expects import-boosting impacts on Lebanon to arise from the European setting, which will be tentatively positive for the
