L’Economist ha un articolo che non parla entusiasticamente di Dubai, ma tenta di capire cosa stia succedendo tra la Palma, il Mondo e Burj al Arab. E’ tutto oro quel che luccica? E la crisi finanziaria quanto ha influito sulla mèta più glamour del mondo arabo? E la democrazia?
In the past few weeks it has become clear, nonetheless, that the bottom has yet to be reached. Standard & Poor’s (S&P), a credit-rating agency, has issued a string of recent gloomy assessments, downgrading four Dubai-based banks and noting that “the risk to Dubai’s economy has increased as the real-estate sector has entered a sharp correction period.” Property values are still about half what they were a year ago.
(…)
The two buzz words in Dubai’s business and media circles are “denial” and “bail-out”. A persistent complaint is that the authorities—in particular, the ruling family of Dubai and its acolytes, led by Sheikh Muhammad—took far too long to recognise the gravity of the crisis when it broke in September. “They were splashing about in the water when they should have been swimming across the channel,” says another Western banker. In October Nakheel was still parading grandiose development schemes. It was not until January that Sheikh Muhammad summoned Dubai’s top businessmen and ministers to take stock and plan a recovery. For months the Maktoums seemed to be in denial.
Altro link utile: sul Carnegie, un’analisi di Steffen Hertog.