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The Atlantis Hotel located on Palm Jumeirah in Dubai had it’s grand opening on Nov 20th, 2008 the same day the world equity markets were hitting multi-year lows. The hotel is based on the mythical Lost City of Atlantis, the irony is that Dubai seems to be some what lost at the moment – massive debt, collapsed economy, over capacity and no one stepping up to save it.

Back in 1998 I spent several weeks working in Dubai and the common theme was “I’m just waiting to get my US visa and then moving.”  In 2005, it changed to “Dubai is the place to be, it’s the Hong Kong/London of the Middle East.” I would constantly hear from friends and business associates who said Dubai was the place to be, “it had more money then God” and if anything goes wrong Abu Dhabi would bail it out. Abu Dhabi is one of the world’s largest oil producers and home to Abu Dhabi Investment Authority the monster USD 1 trillion sovereign wealth fund.

The Dubai myth is over.  It’s clear Dubai has more borrowed money than God and Abu Dhabi is quietly buying marquee assets at distressed prices some of the names being thrown around are the real estate company Nakheel, the Emirates airline and the Dubai Metro.

Several family and friends went to Dubai two weeks ago and got to see it first hand. Malls were empty even with the Dubai Shopping Festival going on.  Most construction had stopped and high end villas were down 40-50%. People are leaving their cars at the airport and heading back home. The last statement might be hype but the reality is Dubai is bust no matter what metric you look at.

All this is not really surprising to me, what is shocking is the velocity of how fast it collapsed. Back in July 2008 major news organizations where talking about how Dubai would weather the global economic storm because of the growth potential. I remember talking to several people in early September (pre Lehman bankrupty) and they kept on telling me how great Dubai was doing even with the world markets collapsing. If Dubai can collapse then anything is possible.

Below are several links detailing the boom and bust of Dubai.

Boom:
CBS’s 60 Minutes – July 2008
NY Times - July 2008. Some great quotes…laughable now.

Bust:
DW-TV (via YouTube) - February 2009
CBS News (via YouTube) – February 2009
NY Times – February 2009

Last weekend was the 2009 edition of the Mumbai Marathon. For the 3rd time I participated in the Mumbai half marathon (13.1 miles, 21.1km). I ran the half  in 2:07:14 which is a personal best for me, the previous 2 Mumbai half marathons I completed the run in 2:16. I ran over 200 miles practicing for the half marathon and expected to shave maybe 5 minutes off my time, but to shave over 9 minutes off my time felt pretty damn good.

Goodbye to 2008 and HELLO to 2009. I’ll keep this post short and sweet, my resolution for 2009 is around getting back to basics.

Also, if you are reading this via an RSS reader, checkout my new blog layout. It’s a whole new interface for 2009.

A bit delayed – Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all. I’m sure many of you are ready to put 2008 behind us, it’s been one helluva ride. My recap: financial crisis, home values melting, car sales plummeting, wealth erosion, Beijing olympics, President Elect Obama but most tragic was the Mumbai terror attack on Nov 26. I’m really looking forward to 2009 and hope things get better, but from all the data that is coming out the financial outlook is even gloomier then 2008. My plan for 2009: more vacations, getting in shape and getting back to basics!!

On a side note this is my 300th blog post…thanks again!

I really didn’t think much about Barack being a black presidential candidate, but after seeing Jesse Jackson cry during Barack’s victory speech it really drove home the point that change was in the air.  To think that during the 60′s blacks were segregated and then a little over 40 years later, Barack is voted into arguably the most powerful position in the world…that is a hugh leap forward.

I hope he can steer the ship in the right direction and not give into party politics. Transparency should be central to whatever he does (to a degree of course), the Bush administration failed and even with the USD 700 billion they screwed up.  Many of the public documents describing how things would get done were blacked out when it came to compensation…that is totally ridiculous, taxpayer money is at stake and we should know down to the penny who is getting paid and how much.  Barack should make it mandatory that any entity requesting money from any Federal bailout program should have the companies top officials make their tax returns publicly available. If companies want the Fed to “show them the money”, I think it’s fair for the taxpayers to say “show me your tax returns.”

Change is here and on the web at change.gov