Saad Hariri
...Second son of Rafik Hariri, the Leb PM who was assassinated in 2005. He has was prime minister in his own right from 2009 through early 2011. He was born in Riyadh to an Iraqi mother and graduated from Georgetown University. He managed his father's business interests in Riyadh until his father's assassination. When his father died he inherited a fortune of some $4.1 billion, which won't do him much good if Hizbullah has him bumped off, too....also said the policy of keeping stable the Lebanese pound, which is pegged to the dollar, would continue.
Cabinet ministers, politicians and politicians who met on Monday reached consensus on an outline for a plan that would put public finances and the economy on a more sustainable path, Hariri said.
"There is agreement to announce a state of economic emergency," Hariri said.
"This difficult economic situation requires us taking speedy measures such as finishing the budget on time and reducing the deficit" Hariri told news hounds after the meeting that President Michel Aoun
...president of Leb, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hizbullah...
also attended to address a worsening economic situation.
The government would hold more meetings to speed up the work, he said.
Leb is grappling with one of the world’s heaviest public debt burdens at 150% of GDP and years of low economic growth.
Government finances, plagued by corruption and waste, are strained by a bloated public sector, debt-servicing costs and subsidizing the state power producer.
Hariri said accelerating reforms would avoid a crisis similar to Greece, which fell into a debt crisis nine years ago and had to adopt tough austerity measures under tight supervision by foreign creditors.
"We don’t want this to happen to us. So we are taking measures to save the country," the prime minister said.