Financial doom and gloom is everywhere – except Lebanon

Beirut’s Blombank has just boasted a record 34 per cent rise in profits

By Robert Fisk

"....Yup, that's right. In Lebanon, in a country whose name is still synonymous with war – and in a world where capitalism is enduring a collapse of biblical proportions – business is booming.

Now readers, I am not – I am absolutely not – advising you to invest in this little statelet, with its sectarian government and mass graves and squalid Palestinian refugee camps. I am not an economist. At school, I failed O-level maths three times and as a result lost an offered place at Liverpool University. But someone needs to explain to me how this little Middle Eastern cabbage patch is bouncing along so happily amid the cyclones ripping through the world's economy......"