

Laid-Off Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down - gibsonf1
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/world/middleeast/12dubai.html?_r=2&hp&pagewanted=all

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jgrahamc
Dubai always looked to me like it was some sort of Las Vegas without gambling,
alcohol or sex. i.e. a hollow shell.

Now it turns out that it isn't even that.

Can't say I'm sorry.

~~~
fiaz
Surprisingly, there's plenty of alcohol and sex there. Gambling is a separate
story.

~~~
jonknee
... Compare it to Vegas. Alcohol is banned most places in Dubai. In Vegas
there aren't even open container laws, you can walk around with a cocktail. As
for the sex side, how many strip clubs are around? How many escorts? You can't
walk down the strip without being offered cards for call girls. In Dubai you
can't even kiss in public.

~~~
fiaz
At any rate, for a country in the Middle East, they are a lot more open to
Western values than anybody else on the peninsula.

~~~
netcan
Are you referring to drinking, gambling & prostitution?

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endtime
Not surprised...Dubai has sounded way too good to be true for a long time. I
doubt you really get cockroaches coming out of the plumbing, but I would
believe that the palm island is sinking. I wonder if it was really a con
(which implies intent from the beginning) or if they just got carried away and
were then in denial that they were seriously overextended.

 _“Before, so many of us were living a good life here,” Mr. Thiab said. “Now
we cannot pay our loans. We are all just sleeping, smoking, drinking coffee
and having headaches because of the situation.”_

Dare I suggest that all the coffee and smoking may be responsible for the
headaches?

~~~
netcan
I'm not sure if they meant con in the premeditated, organised sense. But there
are probably all sorts of shady dealings going on.

Economies like Dubai's (& Hong Kong & other gateways) tend to attract money
launderers, scams & other such 'cons.' There were probably builders that knew
it couldn't last but built anyway.

~~~
trevelyan
Hong Kong is a working city and a great place.

~~~
wtrk
I'm a year or two away from eligibility of permanent resident status here in
HK and, while I obviously haven't hated living here enough yet to pull up
stakes and move, I can't really agree with your assessment of HK as a great
place.

The pollution is frighteningly terrible most of the year (some from vehicles
here, some from coal-fired power plants here, and about 60% from industrial
activities across the border on the Mainland), about half of the population
endure a desperately low standard of living and live in sprawling public
housing estates because they simply cannot afford to purchase or rent
apartments of their own, the economy is run by a handful of tycoons that
dominate every sector and drive the price of each and every good and service
up, elections for the chief executive (local equivalent of mayor/governor) are
"small circle" (a few hundred people, mostly pawns of the tycoons or pro-
Beijing folks cast votes last time), etc.

It's a third world city with some British traditions that are being
systematically expunged or, when that would likely draw too great of an
outcry, gradually eroded under Beijing's rule.

~~~
netcan
It's a place run by it's own rules for completely utilitarian reasons. Without
pretence of ideology. That's also a similarity with Dubai.

------
dhimes
_A new draft media law would make it a crime to damage the country’s
reputation or economy, punishable by fines of up to 1 million dirhams (about
$272,000)._

That'll inspire confidence.

~~~
justindz
By my reckoning, if the law passes it would immediately apply to the people
who wrote the law. Now that's leading by example.

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josefresco
"Lurid rumors spread quickly: the Palm Jumeira, an artificial island that is
one of this city’s trademark developments, is said to be sinking, and when you
turn the faucets in the hotels built atop it, only cockroaches come out."

Absolute garbage reporting, Robert Worth and the New York Times should be
ashamed of themselves. I read the NYT for quality articles with solid
investigative reporting backing them up, not FUD and gossip trash like the
quote above (regardless of it's merit)

~~~
ijntybvrt
It's reporting that there are rumours = telling you something about how the
locals feel. That's the reason for newspapers and reporters (and spys) instead
of just reading raw data feeds. What people are saying - true or not - is the
important news.

~~~
raganwald
This is the line of reasoning Fox uses to justify reapeating innuendo without
bothering to corroborate stories or check facts. It's an embarrasment to
journalism.

~~~
cchooper
Isn't calling them "lurid rumors" enough?

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saljar
While in the hindsight Dubai turned out to not make sense as a "global" city,
it still might make sense for its vast "region".

I mean for the 2.1 billion living between Europe and South East Asia, (with a
combined economy worth $1.8 trillion in terms of GDP, growing until recently
at an annual rate of 5 per cent.) namely: North and Eastern Africa, the
Levant, the Caspian, the Indian Subcontinent and the GCC States.

Dubai is not Las Vegas/Miami/New York, but for these 2.1 billion, a tuned-down
version of these, even blended chaotically in a small city-state, would still
completely make sense.

I am long Dubai.

~~~
potatolicious
This makes no sense. Vegas is popular because it is a central destination that
is both cheap to get to and has a wide "scalability" in terms of spending. You
can go as lavish or as run-down as you feel like, and that's part of the
charm.

It's pretty darned expensive to get to Dubai from southeast Asia, and not to
mention if you're talking about "hub of entertainment" you already have major
cities like Shanghai and Macau. Why would the 1.6+ billion people living in
China head all the way out to Dubai when there are plenty of "global" cities
right on its doorstep?

Not to mention these cities are _actually_ based on real industries, real
exports of real goods, and have an economy that doesn't rely on hype and
speculation.

Dubai has no future. It doesn't even have that many oil holdings, nor does it
sit in the middle of a large industrial economy. It has no reason to exist at
the scale that people seem to think it deserves.

~~~
ijntybvrt
It's a safe (politically, legally, physically) place in an unstable region to
base your headquarters or send your workers for R+R. Monaco has survived for
500years for similar reasons without a great deal of mineral wealth.

~~~
gaius
All of those things you describe need to be underwritten by solid economics.
Rather than Monaco, think Switzerland. Or better yet, Malta.

~~~
netcan
Economies are complex. It's simplistic to think of Dubai as simply smoke &
mirrors.

I would have said Singapore or Hong Kong. IE, Dubai is (was) a comfortable
outpost for the (extremely profitable in good years) companies doing business
in the region. If you need a base from which to conduct your dealings with
Saudi or Iran, Riyadh or Tehran aren't as attractive as Dubai. Beijing wasn't
either 25 years ago.

Then you have the second level of the economy. The financial services & the
like servicing the companies that chase their customers out there. Then you
have a large number of cashed up expats with less family, more income & fewer
vestige expenses. You have the industries catering to them (real estate,
entertainment). Then you have the industries that are comfortable extensions
of this local luxury entertainment market. Tourists, tax refuge, criminals (eg
money laundering).

There is n doubt that this was an obvious bubble. Especially in real estate.
But directly selling commodities is not the only way to make a buck. That's
compounded by the fact that no-one is sentimental about Dubai. If luxury
apartment population starts to drop, that's it.

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sethg
Dubai has _debtors' prisons_! Wow.

~~~
1gor
As a mental experiment, let's imagine there were debtors' prisons in the US.

Do you think this would restrain consumer credit card/mortgage borrowing and
prevent people form getting into the current mess?

~~~
sethg
Very few people borrow money with the _expectation_ of not being able to pay
it back.

~~~
wallflower
Not in the UAE/Dubai. It took a little to google up this story I read a while
ago. The story of a guy who lost his job, fell behind on his loans and ended
up in prison:

"She puts me in touch with Richard, a twinkly fortysomething who came to Dubai
as a salesman with a multinational company. 'And then, in one month, I had a
car accident, lost my job, and my marriage fell apart.'

Richard fell behind on his car payments, his bank loans, his credit cards.
'Everybody lives beyond their means here. It's all front. It's like Dubai - a
totally false appearance to what it actually is.' He was charged by the police
with defaulting on his loans and his passport was confiscated. 'So I couldn't
get another job and I couldn't pay the debt, and I couldn't leave the
country... and to cut a very long story short, I got 12 months.'

It's quite a story. He's only been out two weeks, but he's still managing just
about to smile. But not even the judges are Emiratis: they're on short-stay
visas like everyone else, and the only thing he had going in his favour, he
says, is that he wasn't Asian. 'Tons of them are in for practically nothing:
jaywalking or owing £10.'"

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/05/middleeast.gende...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/05/middleeast.gender)

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titocosta
Funny how about less than 3 months New York Magazine came out with this
article "Escape to Dubai": <http://nymag.com/news/features/52180/>

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mavelikara
An article about foreigners in Dubai managed to get written without
interviewing a single Indian - amusing. I was under the impression that
Indians constituted a large portion of the foreigners in Dubai.

~~~
gms
The Indians usually work in more menial jobs and aren't in a position to flee.

~~~
jhancock
Don't confuse "menial" with "low paid". I'm sure there are many Indians
working in Dubai that do just as much non-menial labor as others and simply
get paid a lot less for it...just as in other parts of the world.

Also, try not to degrade "menial" labor unless you've spent a few years
digging ditches yourself. Your perspective may change.

~~~
JoelSutherland
I don't think he was degrading the work. The definition of "menial" is:

"of or relating to servants"

He was saying that many of the Indians there are working under conditions that
can make it impossible to leave weather they would like to or not. That is not
a comment on Indians in general nor on the value of digging ditches. Rather it
seems to be a comment on the terrible societal problems in Dubai.

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nlanier
As the old saying goes, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

~~~
riffic
what if it never seemed good at all?

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blackguardx
Halliburtan just moved their headquarters to Dubai. I wonder what they are
going to do now.

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yesimahuman
This is why you stay away from these countries. You don't have the same rights
and can't expect sane legal proceedings like you can in America.

~~~
tsetse-fly
Make sure you're an American though, or else you might end up at Guantánamo-
well, pre-Obama you might have.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/nationalspecial3/02gitm...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/nationalspecial3/02gitmo.html)

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daniel-cussen
It's Potosí for the new millenium. Super ghost town.

If they knew their history, they'd know that having beautiful architecture
can't save you if there's nothing to do.

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ahoyhere
No amount of money would lure _me_ to a foreign country with debtor's prisons,
where people go to jail for having a tiny speck of marijuana leaf found on the
bottom of their shoe:

[http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23436226-details/...](http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23436226-details/Briton+jailed+in+Dubai+after+officials+find+cannabis+weighing+less+than+a+grain+of+sugar+under+his+shoe/article.do)

I do wonder what people were thinking.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
Some of the prescription meds I take would have me arrested upon landing in
Dubai.

Scary stuff.

