Friday, November 27, 2009

Dubai miracle

"“This is another wave of the credit crunch,” said Christopher Davidson, an expert in Gulf politics at Durham University in Britain. “Dubai was fairly much the worst example of overextension. It had the worst debt per capita in the world by far. I would like to put it down as a really enormous white elephant that doesn’t have much in common with the regular economy of a regular state.”" Christopher has been right all along on this. Read his piece on Dubai in Al-Akhbar more than two months ago. Dubai is lost, I think. Mark my words. The skyline will soon show empty buildings. It will be a backdrop for movies. For Egyptian movies. For B Egyptian movies. No, for cheap B Egyptian movies that could not afford shooting elsewhere in the Middle East. Sheikh Mo may have to go back being a chief of police in the city of Dubai. Books on Dubai will not be a books on the history of Dubai.