Hacker News Reader

Comment by no_butterscotch | Hacker News Reader

> the World Bank has said that Lebanon is experiencing one of the worst economic crises to occur anywhere in the world since the 1800s.

Is that real or is the World Bank just exaggerating for effect?

View on HN

"Lebanon’s GDP plummeted from close to US$ 55 billion in 2018 to an estimated US$ 33 billion in 2020. GDP per capita fell by around 40 percent in dollar terms. "

Wow, that is a Great Depression.

Per wiki, the Beirut explosion in 2020 also did some 13 Billion USD in damage, too

Comparing Lebanon to the poorest country in Europe, Moldova, show at least one interesting fact besides the GDP drop.

The defence expenditure is more than US$ 2 billion higher per year in Lebanon while it is nearly non-existent in Moldova.

It seems absurd to uphold that kind of expenditure, but it's likely a direct consequence of the historical conflict in the region.

Source: https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/lebanon/moldova

Moldova has a "frozen conflict" where Russia is holding a fair fraction of their territory hostage. It's less bad than Ukraine, but still a problem.

Thanks for pointing that out, it's not really in the news.

So both countries have a long standing conflict in common and sadly neither conflict seems to have any chance of being resolved.

>>>but it's likely a direct consequence of the historical conflict in the region.

Yeah, the security situations in the 2 countries are VASTLY different. Lebanon has militant Palestinian refugees[1], Hezbollah, Israel, Syria, Iran, and ISIS-adjacent insurgents [2] all regularly killing each other (or Lebanese government forces) in their territory.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahr_al-Bared_refugee_camp#200...

[2]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-leba...

Both. "one of the [superlative]" is a weasel word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

If you follow the link, the article that NPR is quoting is more specific: "...the economic and financial crisis is likely to rank in the top 10, possibly top 3, most severe crises episodes globally since the mid-nineteenth century." The rest of the article gives the figures on the plummeting GDP and rising misery.

Lebanon defaulted on its debt in March 2020, followed by the Beirut explosion later that year.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com