Before picking up cash from a downtown bank in Lebanon’s capital, Mey Al Sayegh mentally braces herself for what would have been a routine trip before the country’s crippling cash crunch.
For starters, it will be at least an hour’s wait in line before her turn comes. And if she’s lucky, she’ll be able to withdraw $300 — the weekly limit on dollar withdrawals imposed by banks to preserve liquidity — without having to bargain with the teller.
“I tell my family ‘I’m going to the bank, but I don’t know when I’ll return,’” said the communications manager. “It’s very unpleasant. You see people’s expression — worried, confused, they’re scared that they’re going to lose their deposits.”
For years, many Lebanese have lived beyond their means, supporting their out-sized spending with loans and generous remittances from diaspora relatives scattered across the globe, including family members working in oil-rich Arab Gulf countries.
A severe financial crisis and unprecedented capital controls have put an end to this, uniting both rich and poor in anger against corrupt politicians who have brought the country to the brink of economic collapse, and a banking system they accuse of holding their deposits hostage.
In recent days, some protesters have taken out their ire on the banks, destroying ATMs, smashing bank windows and clashing with tellers behind the counter.
Dozens of protesters have held sit-ins at banks against the fiscal policies, forcing tellers on more than one occasion to give them more than the weekly limit. Demonstrators routinely gather in front of the country’s Central Bank, jeering and hurling expletives at its governor, Riad Salameh, who was once ranked among the world’s top central bank governors.
http://archive.md/heFB8
The annual convocation of oiligarchs known as Davos is underway and all that the dutiful media would report on was the intense focus on climate change.
The "green economy" is being touted by everyone now. It was one thing when it began with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her insipid Green New Deal. When it was just her and the Democrats pushing this it could be dismissed as a silly tactic to push the Democratic Party in the US unacceptably communist. But when it’s every major central banker in the world, including heads of major Federal Reserve Banks, it is quite another. When Greta Thunberg is speaking at both the United Nations and Davos, you know this is official policy.
It started with new ECB President Christine Lagarde who made the first central bank pronouncement about the need for tackling climate change through Green initiatives fueling monetary policy.
This will require tens of trillions in new spending programs to implement the changes needed to combat this problem head on. After her, it was Mark Carney of the Bank of England last week.
Carney said that because of the massive losses from climate change trillions in pension funds would go bankrupt.
Any investment in “green” companies has resulted in major losses. So there is no logic to what Carney is saying unless it is a cover-up for the pension crisis that is unfolding. Governments have ordered pension funds to buy government debts and then they take interest rates down to negative. The governments, without climate change, are ensuring that pensions will be worthless. It seems that he is using climate change as the excuse for the pension system failure.
The next engineered crisis is one in sovereign debt. It will be bigger than the central banks.
They have been prepping the narrative for a couple of years now with MMT — Modern Monetary Theory — which is essentially print money until you drop. It comes in various disguises — Universal Basic Income, Earned Income Tax Credits and the Green New Deal.
But unlike the last crisis, the money won’t go to save the banking system but to save the broke governments. And you save governments by inflating away their previous liabilities, in this case the pensions and promises made during the last cycle.
Hence, the appeal to greenness and the spectre of the Climate Change Bogeyman. Honestly, it’s pathetic. But, unfortunately, it’s also working with a lot of people.
Now the only question is, will you buy what they’re selling or protect yourself?
http://archive.md/wHCGh
