When future generations of Lebanese look back on 2011, they may remember it as a year when the economy, having driven up the growth graph since the 2006 war, simply ran out of road at the top and headed off a cliff into recession. How far the economy has fallen and how much further it may dive is a question that will have no certain answers anytime soon. As Executive went to print 2010’s national accounts — the primary method used to calculate the size and relative growth of an economy — had not yet been released by the government, much less those for three first quarters of 2011. “Every growth estimate is nothing more than a guestimate,” says Jad Chaaban, acting president of the Lebanese Economics Association. As such, in October the International Monetary Fund guesstimated that this year growth had fallen to 1.5 percent from 7.5 percent in
