Nationwide protests, now entering their fourth month, are edging Syria closer to economic meltdown. The government in Damascus has for the most part offered rosy official assessments and downplayed current events as a temporary blip in an otherwise grand upswing — the truth is likely far more grave. Compiling a credible, comprehensive economic analysis of Syria is implausible even in the best of times, let alone during a mass uprising. However Executive, through interviews with sources inside the Syrian regime and the tracking of significant indicators, has compiled a report that portends the cracking of the economy at its foundations. The beginning of capital flight The first negative signs appeared even before the protests had turned into a full scale uprising; private banks’ first quarter reports issued at the end of March showed that the five-year streak of average annual asset growth of 33 percent had come to an end,
