During the dark times of 2006-2007, one of the most hackneyed expressions to get tossed around, ostensibly from investment banking twerps, was: "These days, it's Shanghai, Mumbai, Dubai, or Good-Bye."
Idiots.
So in that smirky little phrase, they unwittingly laid out three Capitals of Despair that would get wiped out when the music stopped playing.
I was just reading this interesting article in the Times about Dubai's plunge – – what caught my eye was that people were afraid of being thrown into debtor's prison. Debtor's prison! I thought those went out of style with the chastity belt. But, in the land of the Religion of Peace, they still have such a thing. Incredible.
Why anyone would ever elect to live somewhere hot is beyond me. I think those who choose to be in, say, Phoenix or Las Vegas are simply nuts. Of course, I prefer mild weather, and plenty of fog and rain, so perhaps this is just a quirk of mine. But to choose to live in a place where it is regularly over 100 degrees seems odd to me, since it would necessitate hiding indoors all the time.
As for Dubai, in retrospect, it was all-too-obvious they were headed for a fall. Besides the aforementioned ditty, one would often hear the tired carping about how XX% of all the world's cranes were in Dubai, which I frankly never cared a whit about. I imagine Dubai will be the new Houston – – overbuilt and full of see-through buildings.
Surely at some point you've seen the "before" and "after" of the place:
….as well as the indoor skiing…..
Pride goeth before the fall. It happens every time. So the (clearly Freudian) need to build the World's Tallest, Thickest, Widest, Most Turgid building is behind us. Perhaps those remaining can survive the empty desert landscape from the top tower and drink in the view for a few years.
