The Ponzi Scheme That Broke Lebanon
The Ponzi Scheme That Broke Lebanon
By Sam Heller
For the last two and a half years, Lebanon’s economy has been in free fall. The country’s currency, the lira, has lost more than 90 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar; GDP has shrunk by nearly 60 percent; and close to 80 percent of Lebanese have slipped below the poverty line, along with practically all of the 1.5 million Syrian refugees living in Lebanon. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the country.