A retrospective

It is understandable that Freddie Baz, the chief strategist of Lebanon’s largest bank, Bank Audi, presented a divergent view from the central bank’s narrative explaining the latter’s financial engineering (see story and infographic). Whereas the analysis picture drawn by Banque du Liban (BDL) focused on the very positive impacts of this quantitative easing measure, Baz emphasizes that there was no crisis that could explain the size of the operation. (He suspects mundane pragmatism to be involved in the operation and to account for the large size to which it has grown.) “It is very opportunistic. If I have to be candid, no central bank will miss the opportunity to beef up foreign reserves when they are available. Because once it needs the reserves, it might not find them,” he says, reasoning that the boosting of reserves is in line with a central bank’s raison d’être. Although noting that no one