Reading Time: 3 minutes Constitutions are serious stuff. The one that I grew up under is known as the Grundgesetz—the fundamental law of Germany. In its first line, this constitution declares that the dignity of the human being is inviolable and that the state has to honor and protect it. Back at the time of this constitution’s drafting 70…
Houmal Technology Park
Reading Time: 5 minutes Houmal Technology Park (HTP) can be an example of tech manufacture and fruitful entrepreneurialism. Export orientation of tech companies can be realized independently from the Lebanese entrepreneurship ecosystem that relies on Circular 331. First-mover disadvantages of pioneering tech companies need to be compensated by state and municipal partners for creation of productive clusters. Risks pertaining…
Entrepreneurship in times of systemic change
Reading Time: 9 minutes October 2019 events have hallmarks of systemic shocks. Risks are unfathomable and early economic impact evaluations are necessarily inadequate. The future may depend on extraordinary courage, discipline, and daring visions. Entrepreneurship has the potential to be a key ingredient in building national prosperity. These are times when a discussion of entrepreneurship—Executive’s traditional focus in the…
A perspective on the solutions offered in last-ditch efforts of old government
Reading Time: 8 minutes The government’s economic rescue plan has been rendered theoretical. The political context of its presentation reveals real dimension of governance failings in the past two years. Analysis of the plan’s composition shows it to be disparate and desperate. Economic reality will require huge efforts beyond the scope of the last plan. What to do with…
Eugene Kaspersky on how to protect industry in the IoT age
Reading Time: 14 minutes On his first visit to Lebanon, Russian cybersecurity magnate Eugene Kaspersky divided his time between discussions with ministries, long-time banking clients, and visits to the country’s famed archeological sites. In between, he took time to sit down with a few media entities. In an interview that was arranged as a joint meeting of Kaspersky with…
Lebanon is finally seeking to leapfrog into digitally empowered spheres
Reading Time: 10 minutes It may be Lebanon’s best bet for a long-term economic future. This underused economic resource has been idling for over 20 years. It is not of fossil origin or other conventional finite resource. Built entirely on the strength of human ingenuity and collaboration, this resource now appears ready for another attempt at making it in…
New ABL chair talks adjustments to state budgets and his views on banking
Reading Time: 8 minutes As the banking sector is, for the umpteenth time in the last quarter century, the litmus test for Lebanon’s economic survivability and hopes of prosperity, Executive sat down with Salim Sfeir, chairman and chief executive officer of Bank of Beirut and chairman of the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL). E At the time…
Book review: Aftermath, Seven Secrets of Wealth Preservation in the Coming Chaos
Reading Time: 3 minutes American economic writer James Rickards has delivered his fourth book on dystopian economics in a series that started in 2011 with the publication of The Currency Wars. Aftermath, released in July, promises to fortify readers for coming economic and societal chaos with not-so-esoteric economic knowledge of seven secrets of wealth preservation. The author presumes that…
Currencies, bonds, gold, and emerging assets
Reading Time: 9 minutes The mundane reality of human wealth advisories is keeping investors in the purgatories of risk. Thus, it seems proper for the investor to track the evolutions of asset classes in a world where comprehensive wealth narratives begin with traditional asset classes—gold, bonds, and cash—and also venture into non-traditional stories of investing in infrastructure, entrepreneurship, and…
Questioning Lebanese real estate as an investment proposition
Reading Time: 10 minutes In the beginning, the land was empty and without borders, but then came people who settled on the land and built upon it. The people divided the land into plots large and small and invented rights of ownership to the land, all that was built on it, the water and resources beneath it, and the…