The coming real estate boom

The title of this article must surprise a lot of people who were more used to me predicting the collapse of the real estate bubble, such as in my AUB Lecture last year in which I called real estate “The Second Biggest Scam in the History of Lebanon.” People, then, were wondering what the biggest scam was, which I avoided answering. But now they know. Finally, right when they became convinced of my thesis about real estate, here I come making a U-turn. But today, things have changed drastically. It’s pretty clear (or will be, soon enough) that the majority of deposits in banks are simply computer entries with nothing behind them, and that there’s, at best, one “real” dollar for every three “Lebanese dollars” (which I’ve been calling Monopoly money or “Lollar”). A Lollar (© 2019, All Rights Reserved) is the unit of currency in any bank account in Lebanon denominated in US dollars. The value of accounts in Lollars was generated through fake interest, with no legitimate investment on the other side that generates real cashflow backing them. Anyone who withdrew money from a bank in the good old days (a few short...