Dubai Bankrupt: Gets $10 Billion Bailout to Ease Debt
Updated:
Doom Replaces Boom in Dubai
Dubai – an Oasis of debt in the desert
Remember when Dubai was the newest, richest, most fabulous city in the world? Indoor skiing mountains, rotating skyscrapers, etc? That’s so last year.
(Okay, the Burj Dubai, the word’s tallest building, is still there. Plenty of cheap office space for rent inside if you want some.)
Chip Cummins, WSJ: This city-state said the federal government of the United Arab Emirates would provide $10 billion in funding, allowing …
Updated:
Dubai – an Oasis of debt in the desert
Remember when Dubai was the newest, richest, most fabulous city in the world? Indoor skiing mountains, rotating skyscrapers, etc? That’s so last year.
(Okay, the Burj Dubai, the word’s tallest building, is still there. Plenty of cheap office space for rent inside if you want some.)
Chip Cummins, WSJ: This city-state said the federal government of the United Arab Emirates would provide $10 billion in funding, allowing Dubai to service its heavy debt load as it copes with a tanking real-estate market and tepid appetite among international lenders to extend further credit.
The effective bailout will be structured as a long-term bond, the governments of Dubai and the UAE said in separate statements late Sunday. Dubai is one of seven, semi-autonomous emirates that make up the UAE.
Unlike its neighbor and UAE capital Abu Dhabi, Dubai doesn’t have much oil. It financed much of its recent, explosive growth with international borrowing. State owned and controlled companies tapped local and overseas markets to help finance some of the emirate’s most ambitious property, tourism and infrastructure projects.
In less than a decade, Dubai transformed itself from a sleepy backwater to a booming regional business, tourism and transportation hub. As it blossomed, civic leaders grew more ambitious. In 2001, a government-owned developer launched a palm-tree-shaped island development of luxury villas and hotels.
Two years later, another government-controlled developer started selling floor space in the then-unbuilt Burj Dubai tower. Both projects are now mostly finished, and the Burj Dubai stands as the world’s tallest skyscraper.
But as the U.S. housing market soured and the first hints of the extent of today’s global financial crisis started to emerge in late 2007, analysts and investors began raising concerns about the lack of transparency surrounding all the borrowing…
May 10, 2009
What, this hasn’t been blamed on Israel and the Jews yet. C’mon, what are you waiting for, the UN to get it going for you?
November 28, 2009
I hope they do go bankrupt. All those luxery buildings and man made islands is overkill. Think of how many starving people that would feed that all that money was wasted on. The greedy rich people will one day know what it is like to be poor.
December 2, 2009
Unless the money was stolen, us “greedy rich” people have earned our wealth and have the right to spend it on whatever we want. If I wanted to spend my 1200k salary on brand name clothing for my daughters custom bred hybrid poodle-Labrador-retriever, I’d do it without blinking. What, do you really think the millionaires of the world would just give their money to poor people? People with no opportunity, definitely. I sponsor 20 children in Africa and I’ve always donated to disease funds. However, I find that poor people that aren’t hopeless are typically just lazy. Or unwilling or uncapable to make intelligent efforts.
December 6, 2009
You hit it right on the money Rich American. Also the guy whining about rich people probably didn’t think about the concept that many rich individuals started out POOR… so they most definitely know what it’s like to be poor. My grandpa came out of the gutters, and was still poor, and from that my mother surged pass that and became the first family member to graduate college. This notion of everyone should be equal/ideal communism is a bunch of rubbish and the excuse for individuals who don’t have the drive to earn the money they covet. America gives you every opportunity to become rich if you put the dedication and work into it.
December 6, 2009
To each his own. I do find it interesting, though, that this great empire could fall into such irresponsibly to find themselves in this dilemma. I thought big-business people were smart, thus the riches they accumulate.
Keeping the riches is another story, I guess.
They certainly could have held back in case of bad times. But that’s what greed produces. Ballance is required in everything. An alcoholic cannot stop drinking because he is addicted to alcohol. A greedy person cannot stop spending because of his love for money.
These people will have to redirect where they focus their love because mammon has failed them.
December 18, 2009
Who wants to pay money to live in a dirty old dessert amongst ragheads, when you can live on a beautiful
tropical island in the south pacific as I do!!!