Dubai Debt Default — Funny Video
OK, so I admit it.
I’m a ‘hater’.
But.
Those sultans, sheiks and princes with their inherited oil wealth, ostentatious (in the extreme) lifestyles, and absurd overconfidence in areas of business they clearly don’t understand are pretty hard to root for at times.
So, forgive my schadenfreude as the farce that is the ‘brilliance’ or the ‘miracle’ of the middle east is slowly eroding.
I admit, I don’t follow the ‘news’ — like one would expect i would — these days.
But, what i gather is dubai world gave people the impression that they were government backed….then turned out to be not guaranteed by the government (this is key to why this is even remotely funny).
So, below is a video of a puff piece done to talk about dubai’s amazing growth.
if you can watch the video (especially the part where the chairman of some big quasi gov backed projects accuses most of the world of having ‘bad taste’ — and i guess inferring his is superior) without tasting vomit in the back of your mouth, kudos!
The *funny* part is when he is listing his duties and at minute 9 he is describing his various jobs/titles/duties and mentions,
“chairman of ‘la mar’ (or something like that) properties…which is government of dubai….”
at which point he reaches up and scratches the side of his nose.
this is a classic ‘tell’ for someone who is lying or knowingly stretching the truth.
The people who were backing dubai world are just now finding out that winks, nudges, and ‘implicit guarantees’ can all go ‘pound sand’. It’s hard to fault them and the market from presuming otherwise though given all the hanky panky the u.s. has pulled in making implicit guarantees, explicit ones — (converting fannie and freddie debt to us t’s for example)
Ciao,
UG
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