Reading Time: 6 minutes They are somewhat remote issues from the perspective of daily survival in the summer of 2020. But the questions of financial accountability and judicial processing of the complex aspects of the corrupted system and adequate prosecution of corruption are pregnant with implications for Lebanon’s systemic networks of fiefdoms, sublime tribal rulers, and previously extra-judicial interest…
Q&A with economist Freddie Baz on Lebanon’s economic survival
Reading Time: 20 minutes In discussing Lebanon’s economic survival, some local opinion makers and economists have been making nothing but dire predictions since the fourth quarter of 2019. Executive wanted to take the perspective of Freddie Baz, a Lebanese economist, banker, and citizen who has for over two decades been a regular interlocutor of this magazine on banking and…
Executive Magazine’s July/August issue
Reading Time: 2 minutes It has been just over two weeks since the deadly Beirut Port explosion that killed at least 180, injured over 6,000, and left over a hundred thousand without homes. The impacts of this horrific event are still unfolding. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Lebanon’s most recent sit rep on…
The surge of COVID-19 cases in Lebanon
Reading Time: 7 minutes The article below was written two days before the massive explosion that occured at the Beirut Port on Tuesday, August 4, just after 6 p.m, killing at least 154 people and injuring over 5,000. Its author, Dr. Lilian Ghandour, is thankfully safe, as is all the Executive team. The damage to some of our homes…
Q&A with the Bus Map Project’s Chadi Faraj, on the impacts of coronavirus measures on Lebanese public transport
Reading Time: 4 minutes Among the many aspects of our daily lives that were perceived in a new light following the four months since Lebanon introduced coronavirus-related safety and lockdown measures was the way we move from one place to another. Not allowed to use their cars on Sundays and only on alternative weekdays from April 5 to June…
Teams in MIT hackathon give Lebanon’s virtual salvation their best try
Reading Time: 6 minutes The only things that are growing fast are bouts of desperation and the holes in people’s pockets. At least that’s the popular impression of the Lebanese crisis, one that can locally be reinforced by a trip to any supermarket and that has in recent weeks further been exacerbated by superficial and repetitive international media reporting.…
Executive Magazine’s June issue
Reading Time: < 1 minute As the Lebanese crisis of insufficient politics, imperiled economy, impaired liquidity, and quarrelsome financial behaviors is limping toward its next pain point, the topics of banking and financial restructuring are taking center stage. The judicial and organizational implications for the banking industry are vital for the future of Lebanon’s economy. As always in our June…
Lebanon needs a national strategy for education
Reading Time: 4 minutes The academic year 2019-2020 has been the most dysfunctional one Lebanon has experienced in recent memory. It has also highlighted discrepancies in the quality of education that high-income families have access to versus that which low income families can afford. This inequality needs to be addressed and rectified if Lebanon is to place its hope…
British ambassador outlines prospects of bilateral relations and economic interaction between London and Beirut
Reading Time: 13 minutes The situation may change, but trusted relations remain. Lebanon’s economy today needs honest interaction and connectivity to long-standing partners more than ever before in the history of this state. The United Kingdom is a partner country at the (from Lebanese geographic perspective) far end of Europe that has had engaged with Lebanon in significant ways…
Lebanon’s experience with distance learning
Reading Time: 12 minutes As students across the world got ready for their first day back at school last fall, they could not have known that they would be spending almost all of the last trimester at home, communicating virtually with their teachers and deprived of the usually enjoyable social elements of campus life such as recess or after-school…