Lebanese investors must stay alert to opportunities

In today’s Lebanon there are two biases. Let us call them the phoenix bias and the shithole bias. The first is the narrative of an indestructible culture, a country and haven of wealth that has never defaulted on its financial obligations and where no depositor of wealth has to fear the disappearance of a single dinar, taler, rand, dirham, lira, euro, dollar, or even golden Croeseid from his account. Tending to the opposite extreme is the massively propagated shithole bias. For its followers, Lebanon was the essence of a shithole before a US president ever tweeted so vulgar a term. No country is as bad as this, we have the worst corruption, the worst electricity supply, the worst financial ratings (recent addition to the bias), the maddest government, the baddest currency outlook, the poorest economic data, and the lowest competitiveness. Even the weather averages are not as good as they