Lebanon and the IMF: Savoring the flaming Lebanese cocktail with a fin de siècle vibe

Any lender asks a lot from and about their borrowers. The story is familiar to any Lebanese parent who ever needed to take out a loan of a few thousand dollars to pay their children’s school or university fees: the retail banker ought better to know your boss before they even sit you down with a customary cup of coffee in their office. But even then, receiving the loan could take about half an hour of signing contracts and initialing IOUs after weeks of waiting for the bank to consider your supplication, or what felt as such. This was the rule even in highly profitable years before 2010 when the Lebanese banking sector was amassing liabilities (your deposits) and bombarding consumers with supposedly low-interest education loan offers to quench their hunger for assets thus equally hungry for assets (the money lent to you). Many Lebanese banks in those distant days