Better to govern

It bears repeating that being decoupled from every other market is not a win-win. At best it makes you a functional zero, irrelevant to all but yourself. The truth of this was reinforced again at the end of last month. When global securities markets shook, from China to developed economies on top of a shrinking oil price, bourses in the Middle East and North Africa region’s main markets were engulfed. Benchmark indices in Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia started the last week of August with severe drops; Bloomberg’s regional index of 200 top equities in the Gulf Cooperation Council by market cap and liquidity, the GCC 200, had a ten-session slide to August 24 at the end of which was more than 30 percent down when compared with a 52-week high in September 2014.  The Beirut Stock Exchange (BSE) was not part of the turmoil. The