Unlike most commodities that are provided by private actors competing with each other, a currency is provided by a monopolist. The only institution that is allowed to produce laris is the National Bank of Georgia (NBG).

The recent bouts of sharp lari depreciation caused much anxiety among the Georgian population, prompting fears of inflation, loan defaults, and bank failures, on the one hand, and the typically Georgian political speculations over “who is to blame”, on the other.

The “do no harm” (primum non nocere) principle is well known to students of medical schools. It is one of the most fundamental maxims in medicine, as formulated, for example, in the Epidemics book of the Hippocratic Collection:

On February 4th, ISET hosted politician and development expert Ad Melkert, who gave a presentation titled "Global Economic Governance: Past or Future?". At the beginning of the presentation, he talked about the post-WWI and WWII periods and the establishment of international organizations like the ILO, UN, IMF, WB, ECB, OECD, etc. He called these periods the “Promising Past”.

Every cloud has its silver lining and, like many observers, we find some comfort in the fact that the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tamar Beruchashvili, is no newcomer to policymaking and politics. The appointment of this seasoned career diplomat, who has for years handled Georgia’s relations with Europe, suggests that Georgia’s political system is slowly but surely gaining in strength and maturity.