Upside-Down Dubai

Last May I wrote a post on *booming* Dubai titled....On Dubai!



Did she really say that one fifth of the world's cranes were there?

On Dubai

Do you know anything about Dubai? All I knew was that it was some wealthy oil city in the Middle East and I only knew that from watching the Dubai Desert Classic on The Golf Channel. Annually, the sponsoring oil magnates lavish a $3 million appearance fee on Tiger Woods. It wasn't too long ago that the golf world was aghast at his "show-up" fee being a measly $1 million. Hey, at least he is appreciative enough to win the tournament once in a while (twice so far).

Apparently Dubai is an enormous planned city allegedly built upon much more than black gold. In Greg Norman's book I learned of Dubai-based Nakheel - an incredibly large real estate developer.

Go to their website and watch their absolutely amazing video.

Nakheel boasts on their site:

Did you know that less than 10% of Dubai's GDP comes from oil?

Yeah, well oil may not be the direct, official source of Dubai's prosperity, I am sure most of the tourism dollars, euros, and whatever those Arab currencies are floating around at Dubai resorts are not too far removed from petroleum-based enterprises. When I see a single T-shirt, computer, or pharmaceutical that says "Made in Dubai"....then they can start fronting!

Dubai has positioned itself as a tax haven in the middle, geographically and temporally, of history's greatest oil boom. That certainly appears to have been a most prescient move on their part. Remember who got rich during the 1849 California gold rush; it was those selling picks, pans, and axes; those selling liquor; and prostitutes.

Make sure you watch that Nakheel video that I linked to above. It really got my blood flowing. At any minute I thought Indiana Jones was going to swoop on in with his whip, his leading lady, ...

...and bid on a waterfront property!!!