When Dubai Thanked the World !!

       All I have been to Dubai is the Dubai Airport. Its amazing. It glitters and in no time you just forget that you are on an airport and if you are a girl- you also start shopping in no time. Its truly a dream welcome to the ‘land of dreams’, or at least what it was considered until a few days back, just until the Dubai said a big Thank You to all its money lenders on the eve of thanksgiving - thanking them graciously for all the money and also for hopefully understanding that - well- we dont have any to give you back ! I think we would have to rate it as the biggest Thank You of this year ;).


               As all the people are wondering why the Big Thank You came, millions of others are left furious, some for losing millions and some not having made millions to lose them. Its being predicted that some 20000 migrants from India who had been coaxed by agents with the beautiful ‘Living the Dream’ dream, are coming back home this month – or rather are being kicked out of the emirates this month. Its like if you have no work out there, you have some 30 days to get your ass out of the country, or city or emirate or whatever ;). So all these people are going to come back to mommy after having ‘lived their dreams’ and going to be greeted by money lenders to pay back the money they had borrowed to pay the agents. Wonder if they can say the Thank You as well – too bad we don’t have the thanksgiving in India – Imagine how many people would be thanking each other ;)

             I did read in some places, “why don’t they pay themselves with all the oil they have.” How can they ??, they don’t have any oil. All the oil is with Abu Dhabi. They can surely bail out Dubai World, but I guess they have been reading Paul Krugman lately and getting smarter. Hopefully at least someone is coming to know that bail outs are for socially productive companies backed by the government- may be something like a national post and not for companies riding in borrowed Ferraris and building artificial islands that no one has the money to go and stay in – well at least right now.

             Some $600bn projects have come to a standstill in Dubai. Bankers, lawyers, architects and not to mention - laborers –have been axed, in some cases, by SMS- and I was thinking they do this only in China ;). People are selling cars to cover up for their loans, as in Dubai, if you default on loan payment or if your cheque bounces, you go to Jail. Dubai World or Nakheel would have to say another thank you now that the same rule does not stand with their lenders too ;)

         And then as usual, we have all the criticism from the west about future trust issues and all that – Veteran Bollywood over-Actor Rajkumar(Acting as Dubai World this time) has a message for all of you
:(Chinay Seth = money lending banks;) )


Hehe ;) You started it buggers. Now don’t point at others. I am sorta glad that the Sheikhs of Abu Dhabi have turned their backs, why should their people suffer for it, might as well make the brit banks absorb the hiccups ;). After all, they are the ones who had all the money, tones and tones of money to build islands, but none to get some sane advice.

            Shashi Tharoor in his lecture at TED India this week spoke about the ‘Soft Power’ of any country. The power that a country develops as a result of its government, technology, culture, policies and most importantly, its people. The power that attracts the world to that country. Dubai attracted millions with one common philosophy – ‘All that glitters is going to be Gold’ and one prime human tendency – ‘Greed’ and one common globally accepted apparently faulty solution to it – ‘Credit’ ;)