Now I begin to think it may not take that long. Never was there quite such a crazy experiment as Dubai! Not for nothing was it baking dusty empty desert since the beginning of time. Its geography and climate make it eminently suitable for this role. Nothing succeeds like success, they say. But nothing fails like failure, with this important difference: failure works faster! Real estate values have halved; they can halve again much faster. Suddenly Dubai no longer looks like a place for winners. Whoever would want to bail out this godawful place? How many years before the fountains stop working, the trees and lawns shrivel, the towers begin to crumble, and Dubai's only future is as a movie lot for scifi stories set in the aftermath of a global disaster?
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html Ever play Bioshock? That place is like Rapture. Excellent article, and I recommend taking the time to read the whole thing.
The real problem with Dubai is the waste of money everywhere . If you have money, always take care of it and do not waste it .
You do not need all the extravaganza of the buildings and other structures when you get no real potential benefits . If you have money and you do not take care of it you will lose it. There are some folks who won millions of dollars in lotteries but they ended in poverty because they did not take care of their winnings .
it's only 60 billion dollars. Dubai has the ability to pay it off, this panic is over nothing. Dubai's GDP is 174.6 billion in 2009 and increasing. Yes that project failed but that does not mean Dubai will not blossom further. It has lots of oil, it can save itself.
A few excerpts I found interesting: I also heard this from an expat that lived in KSA. indeed suddenly this reminded me of California. Vegas anyone....? crazy... If only Americans had the balls to pony up we could have had complete market crash and gotten rid of a lot of these tossers and started over .....again.... something I continue to think must happen from time to time.
Does any of this have any relevance to their "meltdown"? I'd be interested to know how much of Dubai's assets are in Islamic banks and protected from the problems of extended credit.
I understand Vegas is in a lot of trouble too. But of course, an important difference between Dubai and Vegas is that there's no possibility of building a dam just thirty miles from Dubai to create the world's largest reservoir! And no one ever thought of naming the original site of Dubai "the meadows". That's a great article you pointed to, Echo3Romeo. I endorse your encouragement for everyone to read it. The key info is certainly that about the water supply.
Since it's a business proposition do you have any evidence that there will be no benefits? Or are you simply taking your personal view as fact? So what? Did they enjoy it while they had it? Did they do what THEY wanted to do? Why should people conform to your perspective? What's the alternatives? Put the money in the bank and die rich? That's helpful... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
LOL, here in the US, there is a TV show dedicated to those people. http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveMoney/8lotteryWinnersWhoLostTheirMillions.aspx http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-blew-10-million-jackpot--2-million-debt.html
I think Dubai Meltdown is the indirect result of American Meltdown which in turn had some serious effect in Europe especially U.K. The other money people such as the Chinese and Japanese never cared for Middle east Life Style, so they did not buy in to the glitz.
I agree with this. I think that the Emirs in the UAE are smart in moving their economy to something other than oil. The Dubai projects only missed the mark by a small margin. Had the melt-down not occurred for another five years, Dubai would be sitting pretty. That said, I think they'll bounce back. I think that within a few decades, Dubai will become one of THE "it" cities on Earth with London, Paris, NYC, LA, Tokyo, Shanghai and others. ~String
Dubai was a real estate bubble. The dream of Dubai as a regional capital for finance, shopping, tourism, as a refuge for the global rich and as possible replacement for Wall Street/NYC caused people to make stupid decisions and build more faster than they should have. The speculators got greedy and stupid and accidentally turned Dubai Real Estate into a Ponzi scheme. People thought it would not matter because surely Abu Dhabi with it's oil wealth would bail out Dubai. But why should Abu Dhabi bail out Dubai, it's ego-deluded Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum and the global capitalists who turned Dubai into a Ponzi scheme. Dubai does not the have oil wealth to pay for all that construction. Abu Dhabi does have the wealth but they did not choose to use their wealth so foolishly. Once again the worlds "best" financial minds as well as many of Abu Dhabi's "best" financial minds managed to stupidly con themselves into not understanding the risks involved in investing in booms, in this case the Dubai Real Estate boom. Housing prices in Dubai have fallen 50% in the last 6 months and will probably fall fifty percent or more again over the next year. The global horse racing industry has some concern as to how the Dubai crash will affect them as the Sheik poured a lot of money into horse racing. The Sheik was the world's 4th richest man at the boom's peak. He won't be so rich after this crash is done. Japan is heavily invested in Dubai. Every potential crisis anywhere in the world sends many of the players in the Dollar and Yen carry trades liquidating some of their investments and returning their funds to Japan and the USA. It looks to me like other opportunists are aware of this pattern and buy Yen and dollars at the first sign of bad news to take advantage of the vulnerability of some participants in the carry trade. It seems that after the somewhat panicky initial reaction the financial markets second reaction to the Dubai collapse was to decide that Dubai is really not all that relevant on a global scale. Over the weekend some in the financial industry will be probably working long hours taking another look at how much the various individual corporations will or will not be damaged by Dubai's problems. Dubai's problems will probably get worse before they get better. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/.../6668281/Dubais-financial-crisis-a-QandA.html Link to an Interesting little article and more intereseting comments from people who have lived there. Population (2008)[3] - Emirate 2,262,000 - Density 408.18/km2 (97/sq mi) - Metro 2,262,000 - Nationality (2005)[4] 26.1% Arab (of whom 17% are Emirati) 42.3% Indian 13.3% Pakistani 7.5% Bangladeshi 2.5% Filipino 1.5% Sri Lankan 0.9% European 0.3% American 5.7% other countries
Perhaps not. To maintain a modern cosmopolitan city, the middle-east culture need to be more like European or American culture with workers supporting that culture. In Dubai, the workers will be restricted from that culture and hence it would not go anywhere. The Emirates have tons of money...that would not make a dent in the so called Meltdowns. But that money will be more like wasted than create an western Oasis. The Chinese for example feel much more comfortatble in the USA/Canada than any Middle East City. Just a POV...
From a 1,216 post thread called "The property apocalypse draws closer" at an expat forum on the long predicted collapse of Dubai's Real Estate market. The thread starts 2 1/2 years ago and still continues. The believers in the impending collapse and those who did not believe the collapse would occur debated in the thread. http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=445264
