Lebanon's cliches can stack up fast. There is our "solid" banking sector and, more recently, our "booming" property sector. There is our reputation as a "haven" in times of crisis and let's not forget our "talented" human capital, which, at the first opportunity, jumps on a plane and becomes our "hard working" diaspora, without whose remittances the country would collapse. I'm sure you have heard it all before, and, as with many cliches, it's true.
And then, of course, there is the "potential". if Lebanon were a student, her report cards would constantly include "shows promise, but must try harder". But who says potential always has to be realised? The Lebanese were given "God's country", but so far we have blown it.
So you will forgive me if I tell you that I didn't turn cartwheels when I heard that the World Bank has just published a report with the unwieldy title Using Lebanon's Large Capital Inflows to Foster Sustainable Long-Term Growth.
Lebanon and long-term are two terms unlikely to make it into the same sentence, unless they are joined by "instability".
Surely, whatever was going to be said has been said before. And true enough, the report describes an economy defined since the end of the war by substantial inflows of foreign financial resources, a brain drain, a reliance on "low-skilled labour" and an obsession with building housing. So no change there.
Racing through the gears, the paper urges Lebanon to "improve the use of financial resources to promote growth, create jobs, especially for the youth, and develop productive capacities".
It calls on "decision makers" to build an economy based on innovation and diversification to create more jobs to "benefit the country as a whole and bring the society to new levels of development". It points out that banking, commerce, construction and tourism are too narrow in scope to produce jobs for everyone and blames this for the brain drain. The good news is that it's all true. Lebanon is a one-trick pony.
"I know what you are thinking," said a friend who consults for the World Bank and who is blessed with a healthy dose of cynicism. "It's all a waste of time and will just end up in a filing cabinet."
My friend continues: "But I must be honest and tell you that the engagements are normally very fruitful.
"We have excellent dialogue with the ministries and the prime minister's office. But when it comes to implementation, then that is when the gangster element of this country takes over.
"You have some very talented and committed people working in the public sector, but like snakes and ladders, just as we think we are getting somewhere, we always seem to hit that last, very long snake that takes us back to square one."
So that's where we are.
We roll out our highly trained, highly educated, multilingual technocrats, the pick of what's left of our civil service, to interface with the likes of the World Bank and the IMF, only for the recommendations to be ignored by "decision makers".
According to the World Bank website, Riad Salameh, Lebanon's long-serving and often heroic central bank governor, called the document "a valuable support to the government in its effort to adopt the necessary policies for the country".
But the current Lebanese government clearly has much more important matters on its mind.
Michel Aoun is busy feathering his political nest while pretending to represent Christian interests, while Hizbollah is preparing for a post-Assad Syria and the consequences of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon that is investigating the assassination of the former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri.
With all that going on, who's got time for developing "productive capacities"?
Michael Karam is associate editor in chief of Executive, a regional business magazine based in Lebanon
