Lebanon’s economy and electricity system are broken and much power is now generated locally, with devastating effects on air quality and health
Smog hangs over Beirut most days, a brownish cloud that darkens the city’s skyline of minarets and concrete towers. An estimated 8,000 diesel generators have been powering Lebanese cities since the nation’s economic collapse in 2019. The generators can be heard, smelled and seen on the streets, but their worst impact is on the air the city’s inhabitants are forced to breathe.
New research, to be published by scientists at American University of Beirut (AUB), has found that the Lebanese capital’s over-reliance on the diesel generators in the past five years has directly doubled the risk of developing cancer. Rates of positive diagnosis, oncologists say, are shooting up.
The basic Lebanese economic problem is that the government just kept printing money until it was worth nothing. A good example of the end-state of Spudnomics, no?
And what about all the Climate Change it must be causing eh ?
The G’s headline is completely misleading, they are suggesting the diesel fumes have caused 30% more cancer. Further down in the article they admit it ain’t so and that pollution takes decades to uptick cancer stats. A clear attempt to link in climate bollocks and shameful. I wanted to complain but apparently they’ve opted out of the voluntary press regulator scheme. Who is funding this crap – China?
Whereas cancer rates in countries which don’t have many diesel gennies, such as the UK, are rising too and NOBODY at the Guardian knows why. Probably ultra-processed food. Not vaccines at all.
@Rhoda
The UK may not have many diesel generators now but there will be farms of them before long in order to smooth out the intermittent supply from our wonderful windmills and sunbeam catchers. As forecast many years ago by the late Chris Booker.
The basic Lebanese economic problem is that the government just kept printing money until it was worth nothing.
The basic Lebanese problem is they suffered an invasion of “Palestinians” who completely fucked up a country once described as ‘the Switzerland of the Middle East’ within a decade.
Curious if Tim or someone else can illuminate this for me – a friend & I disagree on the end result of the insane overspending of the gov’t – he says it will bankrupt us. I believe that you can’t bankrupt someone who has a printer that shoots out $100 bills. No bankruptcy, but ever-increasing inflation.
So, if I’m right, Lebanese relying on generators isn’t a result of over-printing money, at least not a direct result. Perhaps the over-spending & inflation led to other problems which ultimately led to a collapse of the basics of civilization such as power plants, but not the over-spending itself?
I suppose it’s not really possible for a sovereign government to be bankrupt as such. Bankruptcy has also I think been called “surrender of debts”, where you apply to the government for protection from your creditors and work out some sort of deal. The creditors get something, though not everything, and you get something (not killed etc.).
For a government, people just stop using your currency, or otherwise dealing with you. It’s hard to run a government when you can’t buy anything. A currency is a promise to pay; when people don’t trust you to pay then the currency is useful only in an outhouse (for digital, not even that).
Esteban: No bankruptcy, but ever-increasing inflation.
Your friend would get my vote, I’m afraid.
A problem with the situation you describe is that the $100 bill you get this morning will only buy you $80 (say) of goods and services by this afternoon so the incentive is to spend quickly to maximise the value of your $100 bill. Pretty soon you’ll find it hard to find people to accept $ payments because they won’t want to take the hit of lost value so transactions will move from $ to barter or an alternative medium of exchange.
The equivalent of going bankrupt for a state is defaulting. The effect is that no one will offer credit at a reasonable rate anymore.
Nazi Germany go outof this mess by expropriating Jewish property and invading places.
I gather that sovereign states cannot literally go bankrupt and that this restriction applies to the fifty states of the USA. For states people are using “bankrupt” as a metaphor and not a bad one, all considered. How about “insolvent” … what else would do?
In the thirties Europeans talked of the American Default referring to FDR defaulting on the contractual promise that your US Treasury bond would be repaid with gold on maturity rather than dollars, if you so chose. The Congress and SCOTUS let the nasty crook get off with it.
Makes you wonder whether the US will honour the index-linking of their Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities in the next few years.
“Makes you wonder whether the US will honour the index-linking of their Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities in the next few years.”
If they do, it will be because they’re fiddling with the basket of goods that defines the inflation rate they’re indexed to.
@Esteban
I believe that at the very end, the $100 you print is worth less than the ink you used to print it, so you can’t even afford to run the printer.
“I believe that at the very end, the $100 you print is worth less than the ink you used to print it, so you can’t even afford to run the printer.”
As Zimbabwe found out.
“he says it will bankrupt us. I believe that you can’t bankrupt someone who has a printer that shoots out $100 bills. No bankruptcy, but ever-increasing inflation.”
It doesn’t really matter what you call it, if a State prints money ad nauseam then eventually its f*cked, as are the people within it. Whether you call that scenario bankruptcy or not is angels on the heads of pins territory. F*cked is f*cked.
@Esteban – “I believe that you can’t bankrupt someone who has a printer that shoots out $100 bills”
That depends on the definition of bankruptcy. One good one is the inability to pay your debts as they fall due. The problem with unlimited printing of money is that the value of that money steadily decreases. If you can find an infinite supply of people to keep dealing with you as your payments get worth less and less, then indeed you can avoid bankruptcy. In the real world, however, you’ll find that people will start to refuse to accept your $100 bills and you will be forced to contract to pay in some other form which you do not have such inflationary control over.
Generally, people have thought of the idea of inflating your way out of debt, so already won’t accept promises to pay in currency you control unless you have a good track record of refraining from printing your way out of debt.