Athens to Beirut: "Cooking your books will come back to haunt you, no matter who your friends are"

DailyStar/ here

"... The (OVER) $50 billion in public debt is not a mirage and is not going away. Worse, that official number does not really include all the glaring red numbers in the accounting of the National Social Security Fund, the Council for the South and various other reconstruction bodies, which have debts conveniently shielded from much public view.

We need to take heed from the example of Greece. The circumstances are different, certainly, but the meltdown in Athens should sound a loud warning to this country’s government and political leadership. If those individuals do not pursue clarity in Lebanon’s finances, we will all be punished.

Lebanon might face a far worse threat than Greece, we must add, because our economy is not as Greece’s was before its fall. In addition, we do not have saviors such as the 26 other member states of the EU, whether Germany or any of the other world’s largest economies located there. We do not share a currency such as the euro for which other might feel concern.

Let’s be honest – we have not had an approved budget here in five years. We cannot count on other Arab nations to bail us out.

Some might counter that our robust financial system will save us; it is more like a shock absorber, in reality. With our wobbly economy, the finance sector is like a water reservoir looking for some promising ground to irrigate. Sure, real estate prices are growing healthily, but the money produced is leaving the country and not being reinvested.

In the end, we must get our books straight – for the Lebanese people and even for the self-preservation of our ruling elite.

The turmoil in Greece – which is going to make life worse there for years to come – is a message to Lebanon that no budget trickery can last forever.