Yesterday, Lebanon’s newly elected parliament held its first session (pictured) to select the country’s next president. No one expects the process to be speedy – the last time this happened, the country went without a leader for more than two years as a result of political infighting. But the larger question is what the government can do to pull Lebanon out of its seemingly endless death spiral. This week the authorities made a significant concession: after years of clinging to an official exchange rate that bears no semblance to reality, the Banque du Liban announced that from November it will revise the official rate from L£1,500 to the US dollar to L£15,000. That might still be a long way short of the black market but, in a country that currently has six parallel exchange rates, it is the first realistic step in trying to rebuild a functional economy and financial system. Next comes the even harder choice of whether to adopt the tough fiscal reforms formulated with the IMF.