Not arguing whether what he did was morally correct, but holding hostages at gunpoint is something that you always get arrested for, independent of negotiations
I don't disagree. After all, without such deterrent, the very next day all the banks in the country would be held at gunpoint.
There are many, many people who feel just like he does and are already on the edge, after having been shit on by banks and bank employees for 2 years now. Bank employees humiliate people, as it became a kind of Stanford Experiment. There were even demonstrations outside in his support, during the hostage situation, the moment it hit the news!
And this is why this story is making the rounds.
Even from a legal perspective, the banks don't have the right to do what they're doing. But the government is enabling them to do so, while the parliament is "trying" to work on new laws to regulate this period of "capital control". But no one will come after the banks. The government(s) caused this situation in the first place by borrowing the money from the banks, so it's not like there is anyone on the side of the regular Joe in all of this.
People are on edge, and desperate. Poverty and humiliation, after long hard working lives, to see all of their life savings disappear.
This the kind of environment in which people stop believing that the rule of law is just or should continue.
Lebanon has practically two different currencies. If you put money into a bank account now, you can access it. It's the old bank accounts that are locked unless you're willing to take a 90% loss.
What has happened in practice is that the old bank accounts contain have actually dropped in value, but the banks nor the government can admit that. Hence, this situation.
Disclaimer: I have been to Lebanon a few times, and a lot of my colleagues are Lebanese, and my knowledge of the situation comes from them.
There are two different exchange rates: The official rate and the black market rate. The latter is the actual value of the money. No one can actually get at their money using the official rate. That's why banks have two different types dollar accounts, one for old dollars (prior to the crash) and ones that have new money.
>There are many, many people who feel just like he does and are already on the edge, after having been shit on by banks and bank employees for 2 years now. Bank employees humiliate people, as it became a kind of Stanford Experiment.
Are bank employees actually mistreating people, or are they simply refusing to help?
A mix of both. Sometimes they tell people "we don't have cash anymore", they close the doors and don't let anyone in. Or just close the bank altogether for a long time (sometimes for fear of their lives).
Other times they give the account holder only one option to take money (say to send to their child's to pay for college abroad). And that option always involves the holder losing 5X to 10X of the value of their money. Write a check for $1000, sell it for $100, to get a $100...
At the end of the day, scarcity creates conflict.
And with that conflict, some employees choose to keep treating people with dignity and politeness, but without helping them (because they're following their bosses' policies.) And some just don't give a shit, slide into their dark side, and enjoy the power trip...
This is making me scared of seeing a stock market collapse in my life time. If the market collapses in the US, and people lose their pensions, who knows what will happen.
I have the same fear. And more I read about the macro outlook it looks more grim.
Consider this situation - inflation is now what at 8%. That means the prices were up by 8% than last year. If it stays this high, federal reserve will raise rates but how high can the rates go? Turns out every 1% rate raise causes almost 33billion debt payment by US Treasury since US at this point has close to 33 trillion debt and growing.
A rate raise by 5% means around 150 billion for just the debt payment alone. This is obviously unsustainable as the Treasury doesn’t get more income unless it substantially raises taxes.
If we somehow come out of this situation, the debt will continue to rise since the US has a balloning social security spending and it’s only going to get worse due to more and more aging population.
So our generation (GenZ and millennials) are kind of screwed. I can’t see how we get out of this.
> Treasury doesn’t get more income unless it substantially raises taxes.
Government revenue generally should increase inline with inflation.
As long as GDP growth (unadjusted by inflation) is higher than the interest rates the amount of real debt will go down over time.
Historically debt to GDP ratios went down during periods of high inflation, even without any real growth it’s possible to inflate most pf the debt away as long you find people willing to lend you money at low rates (even 5% when inflation is 8-9% is mot that bad$
Not if the Fed keeps raising rates because that will make cost of borrowing high and given at this point how debt reliant the US economy is it will not be a comfortable path.
But yeah that has been my thesis as well that after a point there will be another “hedonic adjustment” in defining the inflation and that will bring down the official inflation number even though the real numbers are far higher. Just like how the housing market has inflated far more than the actual inflation numbers in last decade but the real numbers barely took it into account.
In regards to government debt (since the thread was originally about it), the government's debt is denominated in its own currency and the US is in the very cushy position where the USD is core to global trade, so the government can print itself out of any problem up to the point that the USD loses the trust of the international community. For the above reason, the number that makes up the US government debt is actually meaningless and is only good for political maneuvering around "increasing the debt ceiling".
In regards to the wider US economy, creating pain via high borrowing costs is the whole reason the interest rate is being increased. People and companies see the higher borrowing costs and change their mind on borrowing to spend, demand is choked, inflationary pressure reduced. The hard part is finding the rate that chokes it enough to control inflation while not choking it so much that you cause a recession.
Inflation isn't a solution. It only cuts the value of existing debt. But future borrowing costs will increase, and potentially spiral out of control. In the long run some form of technical default is a distinct possibility.
Everyone suffers. Bank employees are among the few who are maybe grateful they still have a job; their salaries are also reduced. They fear for their lives many days, because they get so much anger directed at them. Some branches close for a week in some areas because they're afraid of the people. But to do their jobs, many eventually become accustomed to treating the people as the "other"; perhaps similarly to how doctors/surgeons sometimes end up treating people like subjects.
The police went through periods of low wages as well. But the government prioritizes supporting them financially, because otherwise they'd have to make their money to support their families with other means!
At the end of the day though, every person's suffering is being delivered to them by another person.
Americans tend to romanticize revolution in general, especially ours, but if you actually look at history violent revolutions with a positive outcome are the exception, not the rule.
A stable nation with good quality of life for it's citizens, as opposed to a revolving door of failed governments, or a new dictatorial government that quickly becomes as bad as the one that was ousted. Which is often what violent revolutions lead to. It turns out that a civil war leaves a nation on fragile ground, and the leaders who are so effective during your uprising often are not the ones best suited for rebuilding after the fact. And that's assuming your uprising has a single coherent faction and not many who will now set to squabbling amongst themselves about how the new government should work now that the common enemy is gone.
Which in the longer run benefited France quite a bit. It's hard to immediately judge whether something is beneficial or not. See also the 'We'll see' parable.
And what happened after that? You're not being serious if you just end there. Liberal democracy, capitalism and the metric system in most of the world...
Are you implying that the Napoleonic wars, all of the resulting politics, etc. are the natural result of revolution? That the revolutionary ideal requires military defeat in order to reach a positive end state?
The question is if these ideas, already in place would have come to fruition without the suffering of people up front. We just can't know. I remember a similar discussion with my history professor and us students when talking about the French Revolution and about the Enlightenment. We basically have only one history and are not able to state that the French Revolution was the cause for these good ideas to follow. We couldn't even state it as a catalyst with certainty.
Not a meaningful metric. Changing when you need to change is a good thing. One could just as easily argue that the US elevation of its original constitution into a quasi-religious document has a lot to do with the country's current dysfunction.
I don't think the country realising it's mistakes and trying a different thing is all that bad. Compared to the American model where the constitution ia considered as the word of god and it cannot be touch, i know which one i prefer.
Juries are a component of common law (and not used in all common law countries at that), and the vast majority of the world runs on the civil law system (which is, IMHO, better).
France has juries for 'crime' trials under the civil law system. I'm not sure the presence of juries can tell you which of the system you have, nor the system you have tell you whether you have a jury.
Lebanon has a lot of french influence so I thought it might be possible, not being myself familiar with the Lebanese system.
Ha, my mistake, i thought it's an exclusively common law thing.
> In France, a defendant is entitled to a jury trial only when prosecuted for a felony (crime in French). Crimes encompass all offenses that carry a penalty of at least 10 years' imprisonment (for natural persons) or a fine of €75,000 (for legal persons). The only court that tries by jury is the cour d'assises, in which three professional judges sit together with six or nine jurors (on appeal). Conviction requires a two-thirds majority (four or six votes).
Article 421 in the Lebanese law allows acquiring asset owned by one provided that he does not commit other crimes such as causing damage, or taking hostages. He or she is required to sign up with the bank that his current balance reflects the amount he/she has taken, otherwise that amount would be considered as theft.
source: https://www.lebarmy.gov.lb/
