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Comment by anonu | Hacker News Reader

Yes it's bad. It's horrible actually. Lebanon has become a basket case of a country.

But I think the headline may be exaggerating the direness of the situation. Yes it's bad but I don't think Lebanon is about to go into a famine situation which is what the headline portends to...

Source: people on the ground in Lebanon.

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Well, the currency lost something like 90% of its value over the last year since the blast. (https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/05/lebanon-currency-inflat...)

This April the black market rate dropped to 12,000 and caused minor riots. Now its at 18,000 and plunging in fits and starts.

The median salary is now something like $30 a month (down from $600 couple years ago). The army no longer being able to afford to feed its soldiers has resorted to giving helicopter tours to tourists (https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2021/06/29/Le...).

There's gas shortages and riots everyday all over the place. This is Tripoli now: https://www.reddit.com/r/lebanon/comments/oaw4h5/tripoli_rig...

The foreign currency reserves have dwindled over the last year from $30 billion to $15, the minimum required by law is currently $14, and their very extensive food subsidies program is costing them 500 million a month and is about to be nixed. They can't maintain their electric grid and people get only a few hours of power a day.

Also this whole time there hasn't been a government. All the key players are corrupt beyond belief and wanted for either terrorism, drug trafficking or embezzlement.

Pretty sure they will indeed have a famine soon if nothing changes.

> The foreign currency reserves have dwindled over the last year from $30 billion to $15, the minimum required by law is currently $14

Is that $15,000,000,000 or $15.00? Just curious :P

Comments like these are generally not constructive to discussions. You are on the internet, on Hacker News, so I assume you’re probably living in a first-world country and completed secondary school or college. Which number do you think is more likely?

I went to Turkey in 2005. The 1 lyra note was also the 1,000,000 Lyra note.

One million lira was equivalent to one new lira.

Yes. I apologize for messing up the spelling. It just struck me as amazing that they still used the old bank notes, and just cut 6 0’s off for the conversion.

I thought the guy was talking about $15 too. I figured that they completely ran out of foreign currency.

Wow, that's bad, you think there will be a revolution?

This was really eye opening. Thank you for posting. In your opinion, what stops people from organizing to form a new government?

"Better to have a corrupt government than no government at all"

They should be concerned of who wants to buy the infrastructure at a reduced price

That'd be Russia and Iran presently (after failed bids by Germany and France to rebuild their port).

They should observe how little autonomy Sudan currently has.

> Pretty sure they will indeed have a famine soon if nothing changes.

Your reasoning and argument to suggest famine will befall the country is a non sequitur. You list a bunch of events and provide citations. Sure, these are fact. But I am not sure how a halving of billions of dollars of currency reserves at the central bank, for example, leads to famine in a country like Lebanon.

Don't forget that not too long ago Lebanon went through a civil war that wrecked the country - but there was no famine to go with it.

Nassim Taleb speaks a lot about "anti-fragile" - partly because he is from Lebanon and sees the concept play out everyday. That anti-fragility would prevent a true famine from occurring: a rich and extensive diaspora amongst many other qualities.

What stops them from fixing their food supply?

Corruption and lack of organization. Since the explosion the government and the ability to systematically get things done has basically gone to zero.

Lebanon imports food. Who will provide them USD or EUR? Sure, exporters can. However, whatever they export accounts for 10% of imports. Basically, other countries have to donate food to Lebanon at this moment.

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