Hospitals running out of electricity and medicine. Constant blackouts. Shortages of fuel, food, and water.
Here's how Lebanon got here ...
Here's how Lebanon got here ...
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00:00The hygienic napkins are now 52,000...
00:0750 dollars.
00:0950 dollars for cheese.
00:25A bit of that on a daily basis, there's no electricity.
00:28We're no longer talking about just a crisis.
00:30This is a total collapse of a country,
00:34its economy, its institutions.
00:36If there's no electricity, there's no light,
00:39there's no internet,
00:41it's very hot, we can't put ACs, we can't put fans.
00:45You have to think of the children, of the heat now,
00:48the new mothers, the elderly.
00:51Ah, there you go.
00:52There's no electricity for three weeks.
01:28We import much, much more than we export.
01:46And we heavily rely on imports,
01:48which means that our foreign currency reserves
01:51were leaving the country more than coming in.
01:56So that was slowly building to a dollar reserves shortage.
02:10So if I were to put money in a bank, dollars, deposits,
02:14I would be given up to 14% of interest rate,
02:18which is insane.
02:20Nowhere in the world do you get 14% of interest rate
02:23on your deposits.
02:24At the same time, banks relied heavily for decades
02:28on remittances from Lebanese who lived and worked abroad.
02:32And starting 2011, these remittances were decreasing
02:36for various reasons, including political reasons.
02:39So these remittances were slowing down.
02:41And this meant that less and less dollars
02:44or foreign currencies were coming into the country.
02:542019 was a turning point.
02:56The government decides to increase taxes,
02:59including attacks on WhatsApp calls.
03:01And you have nationwide protests erupting everywhere,
03:05accusing the government of corruption,
03:08of mismanaging the economy,
03:10demanding the resignation of the Lebanese government.
03:13And the government is also accusing the Lebanese government
03:16of corruption, of mismanaging the economy,
03:19demanding, you know, the resignation of the Lebanese government.
03:23These protests were ongoing for a month.
03:26The banks feared a bank run.
03:28You already had a lot of pressure
03:30on the foreign currency reserves.
03:32They locked depositors out of their savings.
03:35To this day, you cannot access your dollar savings,
03:38and you are told that they only exist on paper.
03:47The Lebanese government is also accusing
03:49the Lebanese government of mismanaging the economy.
03:52The government is also accusing
03:54the Lebanese government of mismanaging the economy.
04:07Everything is in shortage, basically.
04:09So a Lebanese person wakes up every morning
04:12worrying about how to make ends meet,
04:14how to provide for their children,
04:16how to fill up their car with gasoline,
04:19how to buy bread, and how to find medicine.
04:49Those who live in Lebanon and make a living
04:51from Lebanese books, they make practically nothing.
05:06As you can see, there are a lot of shelves that are empty.
05:09There are no more medicines.
05:12They are no longer in use.
05:14There is nothing we can do.
05:16All the Lebanese people have someone who is dead.
05:19Their house is destroyed.
05:21Their life is destroyed.
05:23My house is not destroyed, but I am destroyed.