Geopolitics has reshaped the financial markets and sovereign debt issuance pathologies of the Middle East since the 1880’s. After all, the Rothschild clan financed Benjamin Disraeli’s HM Treasury stake in the Suez Canal and the Royal Navy’s bombardment of Alexandria came after Khedive Ismail’s borrowing binge and debt default. I write my columns in my study, whose walls are covered with worthless Tsarist Russia and Ottoman Empire bond certificates issued in the debt markets of Edwardian London and imperial Vienna. The fate of the Republic of Lebanon’s sovereign debt new issues in 2002 to 2004 was often hostage not to its fiscal realities, but to then Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s diplomatic pirouette between the White House, the Élysée Palace and the princes of the House of Saud to avert sovereign default. The resurrection of the banking system and floatation of the first post Saddam Iraqi sovereign Eurobond in 2006 came only after Paris Club rescheduling of post Baathist era debt to both the West and the ex-Warsaw Pact nations.