Dubai's Laid-Off Foreigners Flee Spiraling Economy

Sofia, a 34-year-old Frenchwoman, moved here a year ago to take a job in advertising, so confident about Dubai's fast-growing economy that she bought an apartment for almost $300,000 with a 15-year mortgage.

Now, like many of the foreign workers who make up 90 percent of the population here, she has been laid off and faces the prospect of being forced to leave this Persian Gulf city -- or worse.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[jonthebru]

It couldn't happen to nicer people.

[Y2KCockroach]

It was, after all, a con game, and it will end, after all, as a con game.

[Mollabaji]

Dubai's stupid leaders have been fooled by Western contractors and businesses who encouraged them with their plans to build, build, build ultra luxury hotels and condos. Arabs who didn't know what to do with their dollars bought the plans and started building. They hired foreign laborers at one-half the wages they should have paid and kept them in slum dwellings. This is American-style Capitalism and Greed that it brings along.
Now, the foreign contractors have left, taking their share of the money, the poor foreign workers are being kicked out, and Dubai is holding the bag! They deserve it.
I will be going to Dubai in a few days but hotel prices are still outrageously high. I will report back when I return.

[TheFriendlyAtheist]

Capitalism at its' best. The rich get richer, and the workers, who produce the wealth, live in squaler.

[harriettubman]

I saw the lavish potential that Dubui officials want on TV. It is over the top. Hotel rooms costing several hundred thousand $. I thought there was no way I would even visit there. Greed and more greed.

[Rog49Thomas]

build a house on sand?

[research]

control the banksters

invest in the people

or face

depression

and

World War.

[Pip1860]

Sadly Dubai does not produce anything and the economy is as flimsy as a house of cards.

[davidwayneosedach]

Maybe they'll give everyone free lift tickets at the indoor ski area.

[fbr79]

tragically funny.

[Horst]

Yes, SkiDubai was one of the world's big ideas.

[JohnnyLee]

Tragic. They poured all that oil revenue down a drain.

[rizvisa1]

I dont think that Oil was big export item for them in recent time. Their economy was centered around commerce, kind of a new Singapore.

[Rog49Thomas]

there are some who held it was a giant ponzi scheme

with the govt selling land to a government owned company to develop real estate projects and then another government department supporting them

there are also those who said that it was a convenient place to clean one's dirty money

there are also those who noted that it was a convenient place for people from india and iran to come and live to escape conditions back home
there used to be fairly widespread ads on the iranian language satellite tv's advertising property in dubai - unspoken of course the free availability of recreational drugs (alcohol primarily), eager and willing leasable "companions" (and a wide variety of nationalities - from the CIS to points further East as well as West).

[clearthinker2008]

Dubai has not oil.

[Rog49Thomas]

actually they borrowed $80 billion - the largest debt of any gcc country
(and of course they"re not a separate country)

[Mollabaji]

JohnnyLee, Dubai does not have any oil. You must be confusing it with Abu Dhabi.