Lebanon’s financial woes: Rumors, panic, rage and finger pointing
By Hani Bathish In Mary Poppins, George Banks’ son demanded his tupence back from the miserly decrepit bank chairman, that was enough to spark a rather improbable but comical run on the bank. In March 2014, Reuters reported a three-day bank run on a Chinese bank in the city Yancheng after it was rumored that the bank refused a customer’s request to withdraw 200,000 Yuan ($32,000). The bank denied this incident ever happened, but it was too late. Despite assurances from the central bank and regulators, the rumors continued to circulate among customers and even bank employees. In the end, bank managers had to open branches 24 hours and truck in cash to meet demand from nervous customers, many simple rural villagers risked taking piles of cash in baskets home with them late at night than keep it in the bank. In our own country, Lebanon, we had a famous case of a bank being brought down by rumors, Intrabank, and this was back in the economic boom days of pre-civil wa...