The crisis in Lebanon explained

Brut America

Hospitals running out of electricity and medicine. Constant blackouts. Shortages of fuel, food, and water.   Here's how Lebanon got here ...

Transcript

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.

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