...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...’s prime minister said Friday he is holding the country’s Central Bank governor responsible for the downward spiral of the national currency, accusing him of pursuing "opaque" policies that sent the pound crashing against the dollar.
The government has agreed with Lebanon’s president to hire an independent international auditing company to review the Central Bank’s performance, Prime Minister Hassan Diab said. The move, and the premier’s speech, were an indication of a widening rift with the country’s longtime chief financial decision-maker, Gov. Riad Salameh.
Diab urged Salameh to speak openly to the public about the financial crisis, hinting that the governor has intentionally engineered the crash of the pound.
The Lebanese pound has been on a downward trajectory for weeks amid a worsening liquidity crunch and an economic slump. But it appeared to be in a free fall over the last few days, selling as low as 3,800 pounds to the dollar, down from a fixed peg of 1,500 pounds to the dollar in place for 30 years.