2006

Immediately after September 11, 2001, while the ruins of the World Trade Center still smoldered, some of the more thoughtful members of the punditocracy and the population asked the obvious …

For the past several months, a triumphant press release has been sitting on internet provider IDM’s homepage, gathering dust and providing, at the same time, one indication of how the …

Those who predicted that the towering, luxury residential developments in the BCD and its immediate environs would become a sad testament to unbridled optimism and crushed potential had better think …

We have spoken at great length, and on several occasions, in these pages about the Gulf capital markets and equities in particular. Twice, in the last quarter of 2005, we …

Toufic Dalal, owner of Dalal Steel Industries, is at his desk at 06:00 everyday. Today, his desk is a four-room office in a building he owns on Makhoul Street off …

In early July 2006, Liban Lait, Lebanon’s largest dairy farm, was witnessing an unprecedented growth spurt. “At the beginning of July, the market was booming; we had a peak in …

The recent Lebanon war could be interpreted at many levels, but perhaps its most significant impact was how it came to damage Lebanon’s capitalist culture—a culture of openness, relatively unhindered …

A Clinton strategist famously coined the phrase, “it’s the economy, stupid.” His boss was commander-in-chief of the strongest army on the planet. No economy within a truly democratic system can …

When the Bush administration passed the USA. Patriot Act after the multiple terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it very probably did not intend to punish the innocent alongside the …

All good clichés have a ring of truth and the current favorite that charts Lebanon’s sudden decline from Ibiza to Gaza is grimly accurate. We have been under Israeli blockade, …