 I think we'll make a start. Thanks everyone for coming to this seminar. Apologies that Bridget O'Glocklin couldn't make it. It was just unforeseen circumstances she couldn't make it over from the Netherlands. But Jolbeir Archkar and Hassan Cheri have graciously stepped in at the very last minute and prepared an excellent seminar that I think will be very interesting. The overall title is Neoliberal Dogmatism, the IMF and the Arab Spring. Jolbeir will be talking about specifically the catastrophic consequences of neoliberal dogmatism in the MENA region, in the Middle East and North Africa region. And just to say, I'm sure all of you know Jolbeir, he's professor in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS on the topic of his talk. He's published The People Want, a radical exploration of the Arab uprising in 2013, and that was followed by a sequel called Morbid Symptoms Relapse in the Arab Uprising in 2016. And those books, I believe, are outside to buy, if you would like. And Hassan Cheri will be talking about the myth of a changing IMF, unpacking IMF conditionality in MENA post-upperisings, and Hassan is a PhD candidate in economics at SOAS. And his research focuses on late industrialisation in Lebanon, and he's written on the Arab Uprising's social justice and the role of the IFIs in the Middle East and North Africa. So welcome, everyone. We'll start with Jolbeir, and then we'll move directly onto Hassan and then open it up to questions, directly to questions from the floor. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Faizi. And good evening to all. When Faizi asked me a few days ago, I can't remember, maybe less than one week or something like this a week ago, to replace the last minute, the today's speaker, I immediately thought of arranging this event with Hassan, who's preparing a PhD here in economics and who had recently written an excellent study of the IMF role in the post-uprising phase in MENA countries, and that would be better than just me giving you a preview of my course of next term, because my course next term is precisely on those issues. I mean, it's called Problems of Development in the Middle East and North Africa. So what I'll be doing, basically, is to, is connected, of course, to the course and giving you a kind of little preview of some of the views or issues that are discussed, that I discussed in the course, of course, in relation to our topic. So, and I suggested this title, Neoliberal Dogmatism, the IMF and the Arab Spring. And indeed, it is an issue of dogmatism that we are dealing with, you know, dogmatism is usually attributed to the left and any kind of ideological, so-called ideological currents. But the truth is that the IMF is an extremely dogmatic institution. In the past, you had a joke about the IMF calling it the International Monetaryist Fundamentalism. That's very much warranted. That's a real characterization of what the IMF is about. The fact is that the neoliberal perspective is based on a number of postulates. One of them is what we could call an anthropological postulate, is the famous Homo economicus, the economic human, who is supposed to be guided by an economic rationality. And this economic rationality is essentially predicated on the maximization of profit as the main target and goal animating this human being. And hence, from that perspective, you get into the view that if you free this economic human from any kind of limitations, they will be able to thrive and create a so-called virtuous circle of growth and development. So, basically, this basic, very general postulate, which is at the basis even of classical economics, is at the core of the neoliberal perspective, and it is connected to another postulate, which we could call a systemic postulate, which is an ideal type of capitalism, that is the view of capitalism, with which this kind of perspective is linked, is an ideal model of capitalism, which, as the ideal type would have it, is based on predictability, the ability of the rational actor, the rational economic actor, to calculate, to, I mean, this whole operation of profit maximization is connected to a framework through which you should be able to make long-term plans in the investment of your money. And when these conditions are offered, then you have this virtuous circle and you have long-term investment, which is the most conducive to development. That's how the theory would want it, but that's a very general and, in some way, ideal or abstract model. And for a big part of our planet, this is a utopian model, in the sense that it does not exist in vast areas of the world. And the Middle East and North Africa is definitely a key, one of these areas and probably the one which is the farthest from the ideal conception upon which the neoliberal perspective is based. Now, this is a part of the world which, in the 60s in particular, has gone through various developmentalist experiences of left-wing, leaning, most of them, calling themselves socialist, most of the kinds, where you had relatively high degrees of state involvement in industrialization, in economic and also social development, because those were related to social gains such as the democratization of health and education, which had major steps forward, including tertiary education, during that period. Starting from the 70s, which sees the synchronized recession, one of the important crisis in the history of capitalism globally, we see in the region an offensive towards dismantling the model of the 60s and an offensive which is inspired by this neoliberal thought which will impose itself as the dominant economic paradigm, starting from the 80s at the level of international financial institutions, although even before the 80s, as I said, in the 70s, you already had pressure in that direction. So that will lead to the so-called Washington consensus, which is the set of principles upon which the international financial institutions, those based in Washington, the IMF, the World Bank, and also the American trade and the Federal Reserve, upon which those institutions which are decisive in the global economy were working. And for the region that has meant rolling back the state, but when we say rolling back the state, we have to keep in mind that neoliberalism is mostly about economic liberalism, it is much less about, despite the claim, about political liberalism. So rolling back the state was rolling back the state in the economic sphere, the role of the state and the economy, whereas the despotic character of the state, which was already characterizing the region, was not altered and the IMF was very little concerned about that. And we could say the same, actually, about the kind of spending that is rolled back, which usually is social spending whereas military spending, for instance, which is extremely high in this part of the world, is not affected and the IMF pays very little attention to this major chunk of state expenditure. Now the idea behind of that was we roll back the state, we free liberation, we free the market, we free the private sector, and you will see how once freed they will do miracles, accomplish miracles, and that will happen through this rationality that we mentioned upon which the model is based. Now the key point is that those postulates upon which all this is based, as I said, do not apply, are very far from reality in this part of the world. And essentially, and I'll get back to that in a minute, but this is probably the most unpredictable, or one of the most unpredictable, maybe there is another region disputing that record to Mina every now and then. But on several decades, that's definitely the most unpredictable part of the world, whether we're speaking of general political unpredictability due to regional conditions or local conditions or unpredictability of the type of government that you have, which are usually autocratic or despotic governments, and states where the rule of flow is completely absent. No rule of flow, and therefore not one of the key conditions of this systemic postulate upon which the neoliberal perspective is based. And what you get with this, well you get actually one thing is true, human beings are generally rational beings, and capitalists are rational economic creatures, and they seek to maximize their profit. And if you have money and you are in an unpredictable situation, well the rational choice to do is not to go for long term heavy investment or all that type of investment that leads to industrialization, but to go after quick profit, speculative profit or state connected rent based kind of businesses as is very current in the region in the frame of what we call crony capitalism. So state connection remains essential, and this type of economic model is not conducive to development. And hence it has produced, since its gradual implementation from the 70s, 80s with an acceleration in the 90s and until today, it has produced a massive social and economic failure, which is the main root, the main reason behind the big explosion of 2011, which the so-called Arab Spring, which was not only about democracy or freedom, but also, and I would say primarily, even in the chronology of the events, about jobs, bread, social justice and such social and economic demands, along with of course freedom and democracy. So don't have much time to get into details about all that, but that was a general framework. I can try to show you a few slides, which are graphs, most of them taken from my book, The People Want. You can see how the growth, per capita growth of the region, the trend of the GDP, the gross domestic product per capita, the annual growth of that, has been a declining trend in the region from the 70s onward. And with a result of much lower average rates at the end of the period than what you had in the 60s. And that is connected to a declining trend of investment, or what in economic terms here is called gross capital formation. This is without the oil monarchies of the Gulf, and you see the clearly declining trend. So in general, there is a problem of that. Remove the per capita and take it in general terms, and you still have the problem for the last two decades preceding the uprising. You can see how the Middle East and North Africa has quite lower levels of investment growth than even sub-Saharan Africa, let alone South Asia and East Asia, that is India and China, essentially with much higher rates of growth of investment. Now the reason for that is connected to what I was discussing in my general introduction, which is where does money go, what kind of investment you have, what levels of investment you have. And if you take the levels of investment compared to GDP, aside from the fact that this level is declining, as we have seen, you can see that it's declining and quite lower than where you get all the upward and much higher results that you get in South Asia, again India, essentially, and East Asia, China above all. And if when we take a closer look at that, we see that during that period, we see that there is a stagnation in MENA of public investment. That was a result of all those reforms and changes pushing back, rolling back the role of the state in the economy. Compare with East Asia and China, and you will see how important the role of the public sector was actually in the Chinese, the so-called Chinese economic miracle. Now it's true here that South Asia had even less than that, but South Asia was a country, I mean India in particular was a country where there were conditions due to the kind of production of services or export oriented service, the potential for that. There was a potential that could take advantage of the neoliberal reforms to thrive, albeit at a social cost which is very high, but still. Now here you see it, you see the private sector and you see that South Asia had compensated for the low public sector investment by a relatively high degree of private sector investment, whereas we see the same stagnation at low rates in MENA. This fall down of East Asia is related to the financial crisis that struck the region in the late 90s. Now all today, I mean all studies about that show the reason for that. There was recently an enterprise survey by the World Bank and a number of other financial institutions. And it showed, I mean no surprise that the main problem, the two main issues were political instability and corruption. Those were the key issues brought forward by the business community which was surveyed by this. If we take an example from Egypt we see how the state has shrunk which was the main provider of formal jobs actually and the private sector has stagnated and the result is a big increase in informal employment which is most of it is disguised unemployment actually. And the result is the same, at the level of Egypt that what we saw in the general picture, the comment is by the World Bank, private investment remains low capital flight high. So that's the proof of the putting, that's exactly what you're saying, that this model applied to the region leads to very bad consequences. The most important of it is record unemployment rates. The region has held the highest rates of unemployment in the world for several decades now. This unemployment is mostly youth unemployment, very high youth unemployment if you compare North Africa and the Middle East here which are very far above the rest of the world. And that's not because there are more young people in the region in proportion than in the rest of the world. That's not true. The proportions are more or less comparable anyhow very far from this big gap in unemployment. Also we note a very high unemployment of tertiary educated young people and that's connected to the withdrawal of the state which was the main provider of jobs for those graduate. And a terrible problem of female unemployment and female participation in the labor force not only, which is more general, which is very low in the region. And that's again connected to the withdrawal of the state which because the state was is the main provider of jobs for women. Whether traditional sectors like health education or others that was and this retreat of the state led to this increase, a very sharp increase in female unemployment. So in a nutshell that's the kind of situation that was created by the neoliberal changes, the neoliberal inspired changes in the region. And this is the ground upon which you had this big explosion in 2011. Now, where we see dogmatism at its worst is that the reaction of the IMF, of the international financial institutions to this, to the big explosion as Hassan will show in a second was actually more of the same. And we'll get back to that. Thank you very much. Thanks very much, Shilbert. And while Hassan is just getting ready, if you can, if you have a seat beside you, if you could just shift over and if you want to move to a seat, there are one there and a couple there and one at the top there, one over there if you, if you want to, or you can sit on the, on the aisle here. And also I should have said in the beginning if you are, if you want to tweet, if you're into that sort of thing, or if you want to follow our tweets, the hashtags are so asked dev studies, all one word, and ESRC and Patrick over there is tweeting away. Yeah, we have checked about the temperature in the past and for some reason, they just, it's regulated elsewhere and we can't. I'm sorry for that, if you have a jacket or something and hopefully the number of people in the room will make it bearable. Okay, Hassan, thank you. Thank you very much, Faizi and Shilbert. Thank you all for coming. I'm very happy to be here. This is my first time presenting at Salas. I'm extremely delighted to be on the same panel with my supervisor, Professor Shilbert Asher, who is my third supervisor. As you know, this, I'm going to be presenting some of the main findings from my recently published paper. It's about the IMF involvement in the Arab region post uprising. So what I would try to answer is the central question, which is the following. Has the IMF, through its recommendations in the region, stood by its narrative of advancing social objectives by allowing more policy space to Arab countries to redesign their policies in a way that would be in line with the long term dynamic development project. And this is the main question that I try to answer. To answer this, the paper focuses on the IMF lending arrangements with four Arab countries, particularly Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Lebanon. The choice of countries is dictated solely by the research project that the Arab NGO Network for Development and the Swedish international development agency series of research publications. I do have to identify that caveat to keep in mind, which is that we do not pretend that our study is comprehensive in depth or breadth of analysis, but however. And we do reckon that our choice of four Arab countries cannot really give a proper picture of the whole Arab region, which is very heterogeneous in terms of its political economies, its economic structures, etc. But however, it does give a clear some sort of indication about the general direction of IMF lending in the region and the sort of consequences or impacts uncertain on social and economic development. I would assume that most of you are familiar with the region. Professor Gilbert Asher spoke about it. I wouldn't dwell much on that. But suffice here to contend that since the mid 1980s, which was a turning point in the kind of political economic orientation of the region, we know that it was a very much state led kind of region in terms of its mode of economic development, the exception of a few countries such as Lebanon that happen to be more constrained and happen to focus on other sorts of advantages like forging outward linkages with other countries or let's say the west and trying to serve as entreports between the regional autarkic order in western capital. There's something very important that one of the most effective mechanisms for regional wealth sharing was via labour market linkages. So rich GCC countries, for example, rich Arab oil rich countries would demand labour from the rest of Arab non oil rich countries. And immigrant workers would kind of send back remittances at home, which would be channeled into investments or consumption, health education, et cetera. But after the 1980s crisis, it meant that the Arab region, especially the autarkic order, is not able to maintain its redistributive commitments. So some of the countries had to undergo some reforms. Some of the countries went to local creditors to get money. Some others that weren't able to get money from local creditors resorted to the IMF and the World Bank for help. And that is where the IMF's engagement in the region was amplified. Obviously, needless to say that the SAPs have backfired globally. We've seen more globally. On a global level, we see more intensity and frequency of banking and financial crisis, Argentinian, Asian, global financial crisis to say the least. Obviously, in the region, the uprisings is a case in point. Now, what happened is that there was a sort of change in narrative for the IMF. Prior to 2011, concepts like inclusive growth, like equality of opportunity, like inequality, sustainable development were nonexistent in the formal communications of the IMF and recipient Arab countries. We even heard, like Madame Lagarde, saying that numbers don't tell the whole story. We need to see what lies behind those numbers, who are enjoying the fruits of growth in those countries. So even if Arab countries achieve some sort of growth, it was jobless growth, it was based solely on rentier activities. But this change in narrative post uprisings should not be decoupled from the broader change in narrative following the financial crisis. So in a seminar work in 2010 by the IMF, it's a paper called Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy. It's a staff note, actually. It acknowledged the importance of issues like counter cyclical spending, issues like allowing least developed countries more space for implementing capital controls, particularly ex ante controls to prevent volatility in the capital markets. So this sort of a change in narrative is very welcome from an institution that at least does not consider itself bound by human rights obligations. But still, the change in narrative did not deviate much from the mainstream conventional assumptions that are predicated on the classical theory, which essentially stipulates that once macroeconomic stabilisation is in place, growth will follow, development will follow, and this is what we'll see wasn't the case in the region. Broadly, as of a few months earlier into April 2017, the IMFs, all sorts of financial arrangements with Arab countries, loans, credits, aid packages amounted to $57.3 billion from 2011 until 2017. 75% of those were in 2016 alone. So what I would think is that what concerns the region the most is whether these loans carry conditionality or not, and what sorts of conditionality do they carry. So looking at the breakdown of conditionality by policy area in those loans to Arab countries, we see that there's a broad spectrum of policy areas that the IMF, in fact, taps into. So financial sector monetary policy, central bank independence reforms, fiscal issues, tax, wage containment, et cetera, et cetera, labour issues, privatisation, social policies, you know the drill, this is the standard package. So 2011 until 2017, this graph shows a total of 331 conditionalities. But remember that these 331 conditionalities are actually only for 25% of the loans between 2011 and 2017. So if we include the 75 remaining percent, I don't have the figures, but I would assume that these figures would at least double. Now what's interesting in this is that upon the establishment of the IMF, in the articles of agreement establishing the IMF, the mandate was clear. It was to focus solely on economic issues of macroeconomic stabilisation. So some of the tools that the IMF would have at hand at the time would be upon its establishment would be issues related to contractionary monetary policy, devaluing exchange rates, et cetera. But it was never mandated to go into more sensitive issues, more sensitive policy areas. And this is where we see that those policy areas like labour issues, privatisations, social policy, institutional reforms, et cetera, these necessarily lie under the structural policy content. Professor Joseph Stiglitz in his 2002 globalisation in its discontent suggests that the IMF has actually moved from the economic areas to non-economic areas that fall under the realm of politics, and thus they can influence and demean national sovereignty. Now back to our case studies, the four countries, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Lebanon. What the study tries to say is that despite the slightly different directions of IMF lending and conditionality in those countries, there are general trends. The trends in the paper I classify them into three categories, monetary and exchange rate policies, fiscal policies and market, free market or the so-called structural policies. General trend in monetary policies that it's largely contractionary, raising interest rates, stabilising inflation, building up external buffers even at the expense of a shrinking real economy. Exchange rate policy varies by political economy, of course there are certain political considerations there. In Lebanon and Jordan the IMF supports a pegged exchange rate whereas in Tunisia and Egypt it supports a more floating kind of, and it actually asks for a devaluation of the exchange rate. We see the repercussions in a moment. Fiscal policy needless to say it's heavily focused on austerity and that's the order of the day really. Tax reforms, subsidy cuts, wage containment, actually it's in all four countries. Instead of what we believe to be a Keynesian kind of expansionary policy to boost aggregate demand, not any sort of expansionary policy. We'll come to that in the conclusions. Now, each of those categories and then the repercussions of those policies. In the monetary and exchange rate just recently, or actually in the formal communications staff documents to Egypt and Tunisia, the IMF called for a devaluation to let market forces determine the exchange rates. And in order to kind of contain any potential inflationary pressures, the IMF called for a tight contractionary monetary policy to raise interest rates and to show our preserves. In Jordan and Lebanon it's a bit different so it's a pegged exchange rate regime. So what the IMF suggests is that monetary policy should remain contractionary even if we have to raise interest rates higher in order to show our preserves and try to maintain that policy peg, which is like a supreme objective for Lebanon and to a lesser extent in Jordan. Interesting to mention that the debt to GDP in Lebanon was 150% in 2016, third only to Greece and Japan. Well in 2006 it was the highest in the world at 185%. In Jordan it stood at 93%. So the broad trend for monetary and exchange rate policies is a continuancy of the inflation targeting model and this is easily discernible in the region. Now the repercussions just this year earlier in Egypt, even after applying a contractionary monetary policy and raising interest rates for consecutive six months, inflation stood at 30% in May 2017. This led to a rising boost of food, beverages by more than 40%. And we have to keep in mind that Egypt is a country where almost half of the population lives near or below the poverty line. And this essentially means that the minimum wage in Egypt, which currently is around 1200 Egyptian pounds, is deemed as insufficient at least for not even for subsistence levels. And this is one of the major presidential campaigns by Khaled Ali, who is running for next presidential elections. And he's kind of asking for an immediate increase in the minimum wage for 2000 Egyptian pounds until they kind of raise it further later. So these are the kind of political issues that such policies have induced in those countries. We also note that Egypt and Tunisia are both net importers of food and agricultural products. So any inflationary impact from the devaluation is necessarily passed on to consumers. Now, when it comes to inflation targeting, this has been a trend in Lebanon and Jordan since the 90s. Lebanon pegged the exchange rate in 1993 following the end of the Civil War and in Jordan it was in 1995. The problem with that sort of framework is that it cultivated an environment of exclusionary growth. So raising interest rates means that you are making money more costly and then you'd probably invest in capital markets because this is easy gain. This is what Professor Gilbert was just discussing. And then in Lebanon, one of the essential policies is that commercial banks would finance the debt and the deficit incurred by the governments. And then this is easy money. So it really bloated the profits of the banking sector, at least in Lebanon. And one of the most important implications is the de-linking of finance from the real economy and underlying some sort of a Dutch disease because when you raise the interest rates and you've got all these massive inflows of capital and finance into the country, then you have an appreciation of the real exchange rate. Economic theory says that this comes to the detriment of manufacturing other tradeables and to the benefit of non-tradeables such as construction, real estate, finance, etc. Fiscal policy cuts in public wages and employment, cuts in energy subsidies, tax reforms. The IMF tries to compensate for that in its policies by asking the countries to apply something that's called targeted social protection or targeted assistance, which is necessarily social safety nets or cash transfers such as in Egypt for example. But this obviously goes, it doesn't go along the lines of a more universal human protection, social protection strategy, which is stipulated in the 2030 sustainable development goals in order to achieve economic and social rights in all developing countries, the world in general. Of course these demands also overlook the institutional inadequacies, lack of accurate population data so that you can be able to identify those poor segments of the population. In many villages in Lebanon and Egypt they still don't have electricity until today so it's really difficult for the government to target. In Tunisia, there is a popular outcry that these kind of policies contradict the objectives of the revolution in the first place and that's because before the government was elected, the General Union of Trade Workers in Tunisia, they agreed on a salary increase and then the policies came and stopped that increase. And that really meant that the trade unions and labour groups would all threaten to withdraw their support. In Egypt, thousands, according to such policies, thousands of public servants would have to be laid off and public wages have to be frozen. Obviously that means the way in which the Egyptian state is regarded is more as an administrative body stripped out of its social functions. In Lebanon, the issue of taxation is clear and very lucid in the formal communications of the IMF with the country. But really it comes above everything else, about private investments, about the public investments and infrastructure which are necessary in the country and it really reflects some sort of an IMF bias towards using taxation as an extractive measure rather than as a tool for redistribution especially in light of the prime objective of stabilisation in the country and the fact that the country needs revenues in order to finance the debt and to service the debt. The same thing in Jordan, removing levying taxes on very essential products etc. So what we can see from the fiscal and monetary and exchange rate policy paradigms in the four countries is that these measures are strictly political and not technical in their nature and they really do alter the distribution of wealth and power and economic burdens to the detriment of the working and middle classes. Now, the last of these categories, the standard sign-quenon policy of any IMF package to the region since the late 80s, early 90s until today, further liberalisation of trade, further liberalisation of investment, the regulations, labour market deregulation, even privatisation of state-owned banks and state-owned enterprises. So this is clearly a three decades old trend and there were obviously repercussions to that trend but to see the repercussions we have to see them on a longer-term scale and not on a short-term scale because these are structural issues. So first of all, in all countries, not only in these four countries, but it's an obvious trend in the region in general, weaker public employment coupled with an inability of the private sector, of the formal private sector to attract that massive pool of unemployed labour, particularly youth. And so increase in informal employment with weak social protection, as you've discussed, it's with disproportionate effects on youth and women. Now the region in terms of its economic activities and exports, it was very much intensified in the low value added activities which have limited spillover effects to the rest of the sectors and thus there's weak growth and employment potentials for those low added value activities. Not to mention the dominance of natural resources and if not particularly upstream natural resource activities, the dominance of activities that are connected to these like energy intensive industries and stuff and most of the more really capital intensive with kind of not very high prospects for employment generation. This is a graph that I really like and I like to use in many of my presentations and it's like the structure of the export basket of the Middle East and North Africa to the rest of the world in 2016. So if we take a look at the general, let's say the product sub sectors, we can see that it's broadly dominated by well 26.81% fuels which are natural resources, capital intensive with low job generating effects, stolen glass which is low technology and miscellaneous. It's like you can think of it as because they cannot classify it's not yet classified under the UN classification system. So miscellaneous can contain all sorts of activities exported or export products exported to countries, but normally for the Middle East and North Africa these products essentially for under the lower tiers of the global value chain or the lowest with low technology and low knowledge content in them. So that sort of explains what these kind of policies have led the region through. I wouldn't dwell much on that, Professor Gilbert talked about it, but I would just add something that disproportionate effect of youth unemployment which is the highest in the world standing at 30% compared to a world average of 14% disproportionately affects females in the region. And youth unemployment amongst women in the menna region is 47% compared to a world average of 24% and these are striking figures really because they can tell a story about not only the, well some would like to explain it along cultural lines, I would necessarily explain it among structural lines. That's why we have these, we can dwell on that later. So to conclude before citing the general policy alternatives, what we can see really is that the post-apprisings similar to what Gilbert explained previously is a mere repackaging of the pre-apprisings model. There is an obvious distance between the narrative of the IMF and its actual policy implementation. Probably the only credit that such policies can be given is like they argue for strengthening social safety nets, they argue for raising food subsidies and cash transfer. This is not enough really because this is still predicated upon the same neoliberal or let's say neoclassical assumptions that don't really align with the realities of the region, neither the political nor the economic and social realities. Obviously there is an evident bias for macroeconomic stability over social issues in all formal communications of the IMF. There are specific targets for macroeconomic variables like we have to bring down the deficit, we have to cut taxes, we have to cut wages etc. But there are no such concrete targets for issues related to inclusive growth, issues related to bringing down or alleviating inequality, issues related to health and education outcomes. So in light of this we believe that there is an opportunity, in light of this narrative change, although we don't think it has changed a lot, there is an opportunity for the IMF to strengthen its commitment to those social objectives, how by adopting a different approach really. So the paper suggestion for an alternative framework for macroeconomic management in the region is the following. Basically when it comes to monetary and exchange rate policy we adapt some of the basic important findings by a paper written by SOAS professors in 2011, Professor Eliza, Hannah, Professor McKinley. We do believe that monetary policy needs to play an accommodative role to more expansionary fiscal policies, but those expansionary fiscal policies need to be designed or thought of in a broader kind of development project with sectoral policies with clear industrial policy. That would bring forward or try to stimulate such productive investments. There should be sufficient policy space for those countries, for Arab countries and developing countries in general, to devise an exchange rate management strategy that is centred about the attainment of a relatively competitive rate, a stable one, a stable competitiveness and economic diversification. For fiscal policy we do believe that the IMF should rethink its pro-cyclical fiscal policies and devise more counter-cyclical fiscal policies, especially in recessionary times. So there should be some sort of help for those countries to design their own policies when they want to propose public or private sector investments that fall under this general development project. Obviously debt relief should be one very important option on the table. There should be an institutionalised process of negotiation among different stakeholders in a way that balances the different components of reform, economic, social and political. But before I finish, there's just one thing that I think is very important, what kind of industrial strategy, what kind of, well, broad development strategy should be devised by these governments in order for the IMF to accept to carry on with that. I think that today the general broad multilateral regional bilateral agreements, trade and investment agreements, as well as the different institutional arrangements in the World Trade Organization, the IMF, etc. They do constrain the ability of countries to devise more policies, especially industrial policies. And I think this is where it can get a bit tricky because some of the agreements, like in WTO for example, the trade related aspects of intellectual property rights or the illegality of export subsidies, etc. These can greatly constrain the ability of countries to design industrial policies. So there should be a way to think about how to advance those sorts of desired policies in a way that doesn't really go beyond the agreements or go beyond the responsibilities held at the international level. But then again, just this, sorry for the untidy, this is just a screenshot I got from one of the books. I'm pretty certain you're all aware with Ha Joon Chang's kicking away the ladder. This is a graph that shows what current developed nations used to adopt in terms of industrial policies, tariff arrangements, non-trade barriers, all sorts of protectionist policies in order to protect their economies. And you can see like 55% tariff rates in the United Kingdom, almost the same in the United States previously, those, you know, cradles of, supposed to be cradles of free trade, etc. So this shows, this clearly indicates towards some sort of unbalance, unequal relation, power relation between not only Arab states and the general international framework but also developing countries and richer blocks in general. So what I think to end with a note, I think that what, I don't have a ready answer to say what developing countries should do or what Arab countries should do but I think that there should be more effort in terms of fighting for more policy space to adopt those policies. I think apart from that, nothing really will change. Thank you. Thanks very much, Hassan. As people are kind of shifting seats, as people who are sitting over there and don't have seats, you can grab them anywhere where you see them. We'll just wait a second for people to settle down. Okay, so we'll move to questions from the floor. Yeah, just indicates and wait for my, yeah, break. Okay, hi. I have a question, you mentioned industrial policy and state-led development. So my question involves state capacity. Do you think that the Arab state especially, do they have the adequate state capacity to carry on state-led development because you talked about, for example, Southeast Asia and the state-led development and that, or do you think, so which comes first, state capacity in order to carry out state development, state-led development, or do you leave the policies for the state and then they develop the state capacity. So also about the conditionalities and about funding, state-led capacity or like industrial policy in general, you're going to need funding. So funding without conditionalities, do you think that China has any role in that and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or like funding from sources other than the IMF and the World Bank, which carry new liberal conditionalities? Thank you. Thank you. So we'll take three or four questions. I have a question specifically on Jordan. I know that Jordan is always portrayed as a success story when it comes to the IMF. And I want to ask about inequality and poverty in Jordan. And I know that it is, well, it has been increasing its low relatively when compared to other countries in the region and compared to other countries elsewhere as well. So how come Jordan is excited in keeping poverty low and inequality low despite of agreeing on the IMF package? Is it an active policy by the government or is it lack of transparency? That's it. Thanks. Yes, over there behind you. Al Hamizi, thanks very much for two wonderful presentations. I was hoping Gilbert could perhaps elaborate a little bit on gross capital formation. One of the elephants in the room was, of course, demographics and how they've moved along. The role of infrastructure is very important, something we haven't really looked at. And if we look, I think it's a bit of a misnomer to use the word region when referring to the Arab world. So from an intra-regional trade perspective, of course, that plays a role in some of the investments and economies of scale that we'd like to see on agglomeration. Hassan, you referred to subsidies for all of the shortcomings from Washington and the IMF. I think that's one of the positives we've seen in recent years on energy subsidy reform. I agree totally with the point on these highest percentage of military expenditure to GDP in the region. But on the energy subsidy side, things have gone very well. I think the issue is coverage and slippage, the dearth of data. I personally worked on some of the energy pricing reform projects with countries on both sides of the Red Sea, including some of the oil states. And the issue is coverage and knowing where the rents will be distributed. And to that end, if we talk about conditional cash transfers, what happens to the energy-intensive companies that were creating some jobs, albeit through political connections and dual values, the term cronies? So it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on how we replace or support those companies. Thank you. Thanks. I'm one in the front here. Paul Hudson, I'd like to thank Joe Ben-Hassan for two excellent presentations. Both of you said it seemed to be broadly consistent with your colleague's outstanding report for the ILO about six years ago. The Americans tried to suppress it, incidentally. But I wonder whether, in fact, there is a slight change in IMF policy. A few months ago, earlier this year, in fact, at City University, Olivier Blanchard, just before he retired as chief economist at the IMF and then resumed academic life at Harvard, I quoted, in fact, Guy Standing's report, which he was aware of. And he said, well, perhaps we went a bit over the top. So in other words, the policies, indeed, on the whole, had a negative effect, which is what Guy Standing found. And also, people who work in the research team, and this is a nice example of this, where two IMF economists were speaking at the UCL last Friday, at Mariana Mazzucato's new Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose. They said, we're not speaking for the IMF, but it's clear that they did not fully agree with the policies that have been enunciated by the IMF officially over the past few years. So I wonder whether there is a slight change, but maybe you think it's so slight in the policies that have been put forward. And there might be this idea of rolling back the state and letting markets unfettered rule the roost. There might be some change. Thanks. Okay, thank you. Thank you for the questions. First on state capacity. So just to recap, you said state capacity versus. So you wanted to know whether, because you had a question on state capacity and you had a question on conditionality and whether we can resort to other, where Arab countries can resort to other donors in that. I really don't understand, I didn't get the concept, if you can just explain the concept of state capacity so I can understand what exactly you mean. You mean like put? Okay, okay. Yeah. In that sense, I think that state capacity of Arab countries, and particularly Egypt, I assumed you're referring to Egypt, right? Yeah. Well, it has diminished tremendously, especially since the early 90s. And I would give you, like for example, in the recent loan negotiations whereby Egypt was, Egypt's loan of $12 billion was approved by the IMF. It's, it wasn't really that Egypt had any sort of kind of leverage or clout in order to kind of negotiate for more pro human rights policy. It had to do with the, because it really, it really couldn't, it really didn't have the capacity to, well, go for the policies that were more popular in a sense. But judging from the other sorts of kind of sponsors, like it got $5 billion from Saudi Arabia, would you say that in that loan or in that grant did it also have some sort of state capacity? I mean, it was also contingent on certain political issues. I would say state capacity should come first. But what is the most effective way to actually go to go for that? Obviously, it has to be more of a national effort to strengthen economies. And I don't see, I don't see another other ways to do that really, except for maybe developing countries coming together as a block and maybe creating a more powerful negotiator with donors. Like in terms of, like let's say in the WTO, for example, you kind of have these developing country groups to go and negotiate on behalf of all countries, on behalf of like country blocks. Wether the Asian Infrastructure Bank will be, well, will at some point replace the IMF in terms of being a broad lender or... I really don't have the answer to that. It's just that, I mean, the Asian Infrastructure Bank is still kind of focused on a specific region and specific projects. And if we, whether we like it or not, the IMF and the World Bank are still the major donors and they still got... I would say that some of Arab countries, for example, would go for loans or for, let's say, well, like lending arrangements with the IMF, for example, not only for purely economic purpose, sometimes it's a tool for political appeasement as well, for rapprochement with... So there are so many layers to that. On inequality and poverty in Jordan, I'm not very aware of the numbers really of the figures, but I would say maybe they might be distorted in some sense, or they might not be distorted, but there is one thing that is important in the context of Jordan is that the labour migration issue. So, for example, Jordan is known for the exportation of skilled labour and the importation of low skilled labour. And immigration in Jordan is significant, so I wouldn't really know until I look at the numbers and try to see them, but this might explain why the figures are not necessarily reflective of the inequality and poverty rates that we see in Jordan. But again, it also has lots of other issues to deal with, the refugee crisis, the same in Lebanon, etc. On the issue of subsidies, I think that... The main question would be where do the proceeds of subsidy cuts go? You referred to it as a success story in the region in terms of removing subsidies, particularly recently Egypt was able to do that Jordan, Lebanon. Again, the question is really where do the proceeds go? Are there any sort of clear targets set forward by the IMF or the local government for how to spend those proceeds? Or is it just like, for example, in the case of Lebanon for debt servicing purposes? Of course, energy subsidies are regressive in nature because they tend to favour the rich as well, but if we just go for subsidy cuts and removing cross subsidisation in the case of Jordan, etc., I wouldn't see any change, I wouldn't see any positive impact unless we know where are these challenged. In the case of Lebanon, at least, they weren't channeled to any sort of development outcomes. Whether I think that there was a change in IMF policy... I was presenting this very same study in Washington, the IMF World Bank annuals in October, and when I discussed this issue with the representative of the IMF, he was like, I do understand all of these concerns and I do have to acknowledge that after you guys cited those concerns and the shortcomings to our policies, now we are reviewing, like for example, I gave the issue of Tunisia, privatisation of three state-owned banks and the salary freeze which was agreed between the government and the general union of trade workers, and they actually suggested that Tunisia should kind of wait before it really freezes those, wait until to see where things go, but again, this is what he said just a few days later. Just a few days later, we learned that the IMF has frozen the second tranche of the loan because Tunisia was not implementing those reforms. So when it comes to narrative, it really is the case that the IMF is trying to change, but when it comes to implementation, sometimes it's a massive detachment between narrative. Whether I think there is any sort of slight change or not, I mean, obviously, at least starting the debate with issues, concepts related to inclusiveness, equality of opportunities, and recently Madame Lagarde suggested that the IMF needs to start strategising about how to battle inequality. I mean, those are obviously some, I don't know, breakthrough, but I don't know where can we get, you know? Like for the past few decades, it wasn't really very clear how that changed materialised. Thank you. Sorry, speaking of freezing and frozen, I'm sorry it's so cold in here. We have to apologise a lot. OK, so there. Yep, thank you. Yeah, well, just a brief comments to add. On the issue of demography, the demography in the MENA region is no longer higher than the third-world average, or global house average. It used to be in the 70s, peaked in the 80s, but it went down since then. And as I showed in one of the slides, although that was quite rapid, but you would see that the 15 to 30, the number, the proportion of 15 to 30 in the Arab region is very similar to that of South Asia or sub-Saharan Africa, you know? So that's not what this said in general. Of course, the demography of all these regions is one that is quite intensive. And therefore, there is a need to, you know, to higher rates of growth and development than what you have in the global north. And yet we have those low rates and they have been going down since the uprising, not going up. And that's for very obvious reasons. Everything I explained about unpredictability and all that as constituting a general condition for low private investment can only be worsened by the situation created by an uprising and wars. Now you have three countries at war in the region, key wars. The issue of we have to be very much aware of the hypocrisy behind the argument that removal of subsidy for fuel or bread or whatever is for progressive reasons because these are regressive forms of subsidies and they benefit the rich. First of all, their importance for the rich given the, what these issues represent in the consumption of the rich is, especially if you take bread for instance, is much lower than their importance for the poor. And secondly, there are no mechanisms in the region to replace that. Those poor targeted mechanisms don't function in the region with the corruption, with the lack of functioning state institutions. You have nothing of that. So the fact is that every time those subsidies have been removed, this has had tremendously bad effects on the poorest, inevitably, and that's why the poor are very much against those measures. And they don't buy the argument that it is because of progressive reasons or anything like that. And keep in mind, speaking of inequality, that there are no figures about inequality in the region. The only figures we have in the region are about inequality of expenditure. And this is very far from income inequality. I mean, there are limits to what human beings can consume, of course. So there are no limits for their gains, their benefits. And so that's why there are no, I mean, the comparisons, you often find comparisons between the region and that they will show you that the genicoefficient or anything like this are better in the region than in other parts of the global south. That's ridiculous because it's comparing apples and oranges. Because if you look at what the figures are, you will find that for the other regions, these are income inequality figures and for the region, these are consumption inequality figures. These are two very different issues. And finally about this and that, there are definitely, even in the IMF, some people who are more progressive minded than the institution. And of course, in other international institutions, you may find a high concentration of progressive people in institutions like the UNDP or UNCTAD, but that's different. But even in the IMF, indeed. And we can see that, for instance, in the very, very funny way in which you had great studies about corruption under Ben Ali and about corruption under Mubarak after the fall of Ben Ali and after the fall of Mubarak. It's obvious that those who did this, these studies should have known about this before, but they wouldn't be able to do that within a framework like this one. Now, the key point remains that this general policy, the general neoliberal framework upon which these institutions or the IMF in particular are based, has not changed. And that's what I'm calling dogmatism. And you can have a very clear illustration of that. If you move from the MENA region where you have a huge illustration with the post uprising behavior of these institutions of more of the same, but you look at the global level, I mean, for 30 years after the Second World War, the dominant paradigm in the global economy, and speaking of market economies, was essentially Keynesian. Now, it took one major crisis in the 70s, not one of the major, most important crisis in the history of the system, but a major crisis in the 70s for this paradigm to be the object of a fferocious offensive dismantling the paradigm and replacing it with the neoliberal paradigm. Now, we have had a few years ago a much more serious global economic crisis, in which we still are the great recession as it's called in 2007, 2008 and still in England. And at first, when it happened, we have seen the state in countries including like the United States with administrations like the George W. Bush administration violate the textbook of neoliberalism by heavy state intervention bailing out financial institutions. So at that point you had a whole lot of comments of people telling you very imprudently, this is the end of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is dead and all that. In 2008 Newsweek came out with a cover saying we are all socialists now. And look where we are. Actually the crisis was seized as an opportunity by all governments to go for the same, more of the same. It's the same mantra that we hear, whether the Arab uprising or Arab spring as it was called or the global crisis. The reason for it is that the neoliberal recipes were not radically enough implemented. That's the point. So you have to implement them even more radically. I mean this is of course a recipe for further and bigger disasters. It shows you one thing and I'll end with that. The global economic paradigm is not a matter of economist thinking. It's not a matter of thinking. It's not a matter of intellectual debate. It's a matter of social balance of forces. And the shift of the 70s was a product of a deterioration of the social balance of forces to the detriment of the workers movement globally over the previous decades. And we are still in a general framework of deteriorated balance of forces. And as long as you have this financial capital which is the section of capitalism that is most profiting from the neoliberal framework will carry on imposing its views. In order to change that it won't take, you know, the debate is here. I mean there are plenty of discussions of neoliberalism from the start. We know exactly we have the whole intellectual ingredients to get rid of it. This problem is not here. The problem is that it is a class-enforced paradigm that won't be removed unless there is a counter-class pressure. Thank you, Gilbert. We'll just take three or four more questions and then possibly more. OK, one over here at the front and then the gentleman behind him after that. Thank you. In terms of the counter-class forces that you said are needed to, I suppose, overthrow the paradigm, the existing paradigm, what manifestation might they take? I'm interested in the moment in Yanis Farfax's political memoirs of what he experienced in Greece. And what he was advocating was standing up to the transnational neoliberal paradigm and their actors by simply suggesting that we will default on our payments, on our repayments. If the solvent stops ladening us with more debt, we will default and sending out deterrents to that end. Do you think that's a possible manifestation of the pushback or the next era or what might you suggest? Thank you. OK, I have two questions actually for both of the panellists. The first one has to do with the political dimension of the Arab uprisings. And I would like to know because you both said that basically all the causes of the uprisings are still there and they are actually deepening the neoliberalism in the region. So does that mean that the Arab regimes will have to increase on their repression on the people to keep these reforms advancing because you have the causes there, unemployment, privatisation, poverty, all that? How are the regimes going to deal with that situation? That's the first question. The other question is back to the economic question of this debate. I'd like you to make some comments on the foreign debt of the countries of the region. How important is the foreign debt in relation to the dependency of these economies to the main economies of the world, European United States? And if stopping paying the foreign debt would be a measure to be considered on those countries to change the economic dynamics of the region? Thank you. Thanks. So with increasing talk of reconstruction in Syria, how does what you told us play out in the reconstruction sphere? Thank you. Thank you. I have a question about specifically the case of Lebanon where I think that the conflation of the economic power and the political power is very obvious. And the recent study by Lydia Aswed who tried to look at the inequality of income showed that 1% of the population owns 23% of the total income and 40% of the wealth. And that more or less that 1% of economic power is identical to the political power. And a context like this where this conflation reinforces the neoliberal framework just like the IMF wants, where does the shift come from or the change come from? And do you think that it can come from pressures from the bottom to the top within the country and to what extent is that possible given recent the current situation also with the whole situation in the region? Thank you. Thanks. Alan, I'm sorry. It's just behind you. My question resonates with the last two actually quite a bit. I'm from the region so it's sometimes hard to put distance. But there's something very uncomfortable with the abstraction you have made, I think, to this much more complex and heterogeneous political environment and at the same time quite interesting. So it would be, I think, useful for all of these questions for me as well if you can expand on how you deal with the fact that you have made this abstraction or are dealing with analysing on this issue in a vacuum of the more of the nuance. And have you compared it with IMF behaviour in other countries, not in the region? Any last questions? Will I have you again? Go on. That would be the last one. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on how the IMF behaves with countries in the region which it doesn't lend to. And a little bit on, you alluded to it, I think somebody mentioned Saudi Arabia. But this competition on conditionality and capital vis-à-vis of Egypt, Saudi Arabia. And I'd actually disagree with the political conditionality. As you've seen, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen were not areas where Egypt followed suit, but of course Qatar is a different discussion. Gilbert, you didn't really say anything on infrastructure and the intra-regional nature. And finally, you mentioned NTBs and NTMs. Can you talk a little bit more about how those have developed in recent years? And if things are getting worse or better across the region. Thanks. And the final question over here. So I just wanted to follow up on one question that was asked before, and especially on the conflation between elites and the state. So if we consider that the state is a representation of the ruling class's power, can we consider that the state should be an actor to enact reforms that would benefit the entirety of the population? In that case, or are they just going to continue enacting the neoliberal project unless the state is taken over in a way? Thank you. Thank you. So we'll hear from Hassan and then Gilbert. Hassan, okay. Thank you. Those are quite tricky questions, but thank you. I don't know where to start. It was the first. Okay, I can try to start from last beginning. I'm trying to consolidate two questions together on, because your questions are very similar in terms of the state business relationships. First of all, in the case of, let me start with the case of Lebanon. Probably is what I know best. And whether the balance of power relation does provide any sort of leverage for the bottom, for the grassroots to come up with any sort of change. In addition to the study that you just mentioned, there's also a previous study in 2015 by Professor Jacques Avan from the American University of Beirut on the links between the banking sector and the officials, the elites in government. And that particular study has shown that 43% of banking assets are directly linked to politicians and their families, and by politicians, members of the parliament or cabinet members. And 28% of shareholders of banks happen to be in the cabinet. So that kind of gives a broad picture of the links of state business relationship of what Professor Jacques Avan called crony capitalism. I think it is challenging for a bottom-up approach in Lebanon, especially given the last year's events with the grassroots group you think, or we want to prosecute, or these kind of movements. But again, my concern about whether these will be effective or not in the future is whether there is a real genuine debate amongst the grassroots in Lebanon on the importance of coming up with an alternative strategy for economic and political governance. Because really, as you might know, Lebanon is very much vertically polarized, right, along sectarian lines, along confession lines. So it's not easy to promote that sort of debate in a country among the grassroots. But if it's successful to do so, then I think yes, there might be some sort of potential for change from bottom up. On reconstruction in Syria, was it your question, right? Well, obviously the debate now is ongoing on the reconstruction phase, but I am sure of one thing, for successful reconstruction in Syria to take place, it has to be very different from the Lebanese reconstruction phase, because that was a massive failure. And so the Lebanese reconstruction is essentially the epitome of neoliberal agenda implemented in the country. So any sort of reconstruction in Syria should not go along similar lines. Well, on the issue of IMF influence in countries that it doesn't lend to, Lebanon is one of those countries, right? You mentioned Saudi Arabia, I'm not very familiar with the case of Saudi Arabia, but I wouldn't imagine much change in terms of or much conditionality in terms of altering the structure of Saudi Arabia, but looking at the empirical evidence on let's say the industrial or export structures of the country, you'd see that more than 90% of its budget is based on revenues from the sector, from the natural resources sector, but when it comes to the exports, that figure can go above 70% as well. So I wouldn't really see any change. Now MBS is proposing some vision for 2030, that's the way I didn't see, but a case in point is Lebanon. It doesn't get any funds from the IMF. Well, there was only a $70 million sweeping deal, but it was part of a broader Paris speed package for the country, so it wasn't loan, an ad hoc loan. And we see the kind of, it doesn't really stray away from the major neoliberal doctrine that was adopted, that was implemented in many other countries, or suggested to many other recipient countries. I've got notes here and there, I'm not sure if I missed any of the other questions. Was your question about the IMF behaviour in other regions? Right. So, whether we looked at other regions... You had a question about the IMF behaviour in other regions? I mean, I wouldn't say I'm very aware of what the IMF has done in other regions, but I would surely say that the very package of policies that was proposed for Arab countries pre and post uprisings is essentially in line with the broader trends of monetary, fiscal, structural policies adopted in the global economy since the 90s for the past three decades. I would say that the increasing intensity and frequency of financial crises in the world, despite the taming of inflation in some of other countries, is a case in point for why the IMF, or for why that package of neoliberal policies hasn't changed much in other regions. I hope that answers the question. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Okay, thanks. Okay, right. First of all, I mean, there was a comment on the prospect for the implementation of such reforms and what it entails in terms of repression. I think Egypt is a clear case. That's the country which has delivered recently, I mean, a year ago, a massive implementation of the full spectrum of IMF recipes, and that led to a skyrocketing inflation in the country with the collapse of the value of the Egyptian pound and its effect on all sorts of prices and therefore a terrible deterioration in the condition of living of the vast majority of Egyptians. But that was possible because of a very repressive state which is quite more repressive than the Mubarak era. Actually, Egypt did not just go back to the ASEAN regime. It went into a much tougher version of what you had. So there is no way such measures can be implemented without an increase in repression, and that goes usually. It's the normal accompaniment of neoliberalism everywhere, actually. The neoliberal turn in countries, even like the UK or the United States, went along with zero tolerance, an increase in repression, and a huge increase in the number of people in jail in the United States where it reached absolutely gigantic proportion. So we have to be aware that there is no way out of the crisis in the region without a radical change of the social-political system. And when we speak of where could the pressure come from, of course the pressure is the ability of, it presupposes the existence also of organized movement among the popular classes to push for this change at the top, which is the condition for a change in the policy that comes from the top. Now, there is no immediate prospect for that anywhere in the region, but the potential is there. The potential was revealed in 2011, and there are various indications that this potential is still there. It has been crushed, for instance. However, it needs to be able to organize in order to fight for a different perspective. If you have this, then the question becomes also of the regional and global balance of forces, because of course it very much affects the margin of action in any country like Greece was mentioned. Of course Greece was the victim of a European balance of forces and the global one. And the very size of Greece put the limitations on what it could do. It's not to say or to excuse or approve the choices made by the Tsipras government, that's definitely one aspect of the story that no one can miss. But this said, even countries like Jordan, for instance Jordan, or as I mentioned, even countries like Jordan, if you see the income in the exploitation of its natural resources and compares the rate of exploitation of such resources in neighboring Israel, you will see that there is a potential of national resources that is there, not to mention the capital flight that we saw, that is a general feature in the region. When you had this toppling of these dictators, we heard of tens of billions of dollars embezzled and shifted away by them. So that shows you that there are plenty of resources in those countries that are dilapidated and that with a different kind of political, social political structure could be mobilized and used for the sake of the vast majority. Well, I spoke of change at the level of the state because indeed the objection that such states are so corrupt and dictatorial and all that, to imagine them implementing the right reforms is something difficult. That's true, that's why I'm saying that we can devise different alternative policies as Hassan was calling them, but I think one should be clear about that there is no way out of the crisis without a radical social political change you won't have a real change in policies because again, it's not a matter of intellectual debate, it's a matter of balance of forces, of social domination, that's what is at stake. And then the rest is a matter of, as I said, global balance of forces, the debt, well, the debt has been as I guess everybody knows a key mechanism for the subjugation of the global house and the implementation of the neoliberal changes, but that's a field where a matter of balance of forces is very important, so it depends on which country we are dealing with. And again, example of Greece is glaring in that regard. On the reconstruction of Syria, all the blueprints that are being put on the table presently indicate something that is actually even worse than what Lebanon had gone through, although more that there you have a state which is worse than the Lebanese state in many respect in its predatory character, and Russia is preparing itself to play a key role in taking advantage of all that, but keep in mind that this is fiction. For time being, because the situation in Syria is not exactly one where reconstruction is for tomorrow, unfortunately. Finally, yes, of course, the issue of the regional dimension is very important in any alternative way, but I think it's a very important issue because, yes, of course, the issue of the regional dimension is very important in any alternative view for the development of the region to mention about economies of scale, and all that, of course, should be obvious. At a time when you had a lot of real regional experiences, not only in the global north, with the European Union or NAFTA or whatever, but even the global south with the southern tip of Latin America, for instance, or other parts of the world, here you have a region, speaking, I mean having the same official language and all that, and not able to go beyond some symbolic gesture in terms of economic relations with each country having much stronger economic relations with the global north than they have between themselves. Of course, that's one of the conditions of the exploitation of this region, and that's why it was carved up by colonial powers, including the creation of very artificial tiny states around oil fields, like in the Gulf region, and that's also why every project at unification, like the one of Nasser in the past, was fought very viciously by the United States, above all, but Western powers in general. Please join me in thanking Jobera and Hassan.