{"id":192767,"date":"2009-02-23T18:31:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-23T23:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/23\/when-lebanon-is-a-safe-haven-for-your-money\/"},"modified":"2009-02-23T18:31:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-23T23:31:00","slug":"when-lebanon-is-a-safe-haven-for-your-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/23\/when-lebanon-is-a-safe-haven-for-your-money\/","title":{"rendered":"When Lebanon is A Safe Haven for Your Money&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/la-fg-lebanon-banker21-2009feb21,0,1982246.story\">we are completely boned<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>Instead, the silver-haired banker became a hero by playing it very, very safe. In 2005, he defied pressure from the Lebanese business community and bucked international trends to issue what now looks like a prophetic decree: a blanket order barring any bank in his country from investing in mortgage-backed securities, which contributed to the most dramatic collapse of financial institutions since the Great Depression.<\/p>\n<p>So as major banks in America and Europe were shuttered or partly nationalized and thousands of people in the U.S. financial sector were laid off, Lebanon&#8217;s banks had one of their best years ever.<\/p>\n<p>Billions in cash continue to pour in to the relative safety of Lebanese savings accounts, with comfy but not extravagant yields of 6%. A nation shunned for years as the quintessential failed state has become a pretty safe bet, or as safe a bet as investors are likely to find in this climate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Lebanon as safe haven&#8230;.I have a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">real<\/span> problem wrapping my head around this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know that we are completely boned: Instead, the silver-haired banker became a hero by playing it very, very safe. In 2005, he defied pressure from the Lebanese business community and bucked international trends to issue what now looks like a prophetic decree: a blanket order barring any bank in his country from investing in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1004,986,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-middle-east","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192767"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}