Tuesday, February 10/2009

Banks as thick on the ground as travel agencies here, frequently more than one to the block. The ground floor of our hotel has one, and there are two in the building immediately across the road (the Lebanese and Gulf Bank and an investment bank) and one in the building kitty corner to us - and this isn't unusual density. They seem to be surviving the crisis reasonably well, in part probably, because loans come out of investments rather than from borrowed funds.