Word: banke
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Inevitably, though, the laws of economics have reasserted themselves. Since oil prices plummeted, and world stock markets crashed last fall, some $75 billion worth of real estate projects have been suspended and canceled in Dubai, according to a report by the local branch of HSBC bank. Business journal the Middle East Economic Digest puts the figure at more than $300 billion. Postponed developments include the World, a luxury man-made island community designed to resemble a world map, and Dubailand, a theme park planned to be twice the size of Florida's Disney World. Housing prices have fallen...
...billion Dubai bond issue. Among other things, the bailout money has helped shore up the state-owned development companies behind most of those massive building projects. Still, the shakeout is probably not over yet, according to Saud Masoud, an analyst at the Dubai office of investment bank UBS. Masoud predicts house prices could eventually fall as much as 70% from last year's highs. "You can't just put in more capital," he says, arguing that Dubai needs to be more transparent about the seriousness of the real estate crisis, and diversify its economy. "At some point demand...
Mohamed, the Scottish real estate broker, is thinking of leaving too. His company is declaring bankruptcy, he says, and security guards recently prevented him from removing furniture from his office because of a rent dispute with the landlord. A local bank keeps calling to ask for the whereabouts of a former employee, a male nurse from Edinburgh who came to Dubai, hit the nightclub scene, bought a Porsche convertible, and then fled home after a week on the job, leaving about $115,000 in debt. "What were [they] thinking, loaning ?80,000 to a 24-year-old with no stable...
...huge problems. Major roads are still in need of repair; large towns still do not have safe tap water. Schools cannot provide students with textbooks, and civil servants grumble over the $100 monthly salary they receive. And Zimbabwe owes international financial organizations more than $1 billion. While the World Bank has agreed to resume aid to Zimbabwe for the first time since 2000 with a tentative $22 million grant, bigger loans will follow only after Harare retires its debt. (See pictures by James Nachtwey on some of the poorest people in the world, including in Zimbabwe...
Meanwhile, Tsvangirai accused Mugabe of making unilateral decisions in appointing senior government officials such as the attorney general, the central-bank head and diplomats. The Prime Minister's political party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has since called on the Southern African Development Community - which brokered the power-sharing deal - to mediate between it and Mugabe's party, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU-PF). The MDC has accused Mugabe and ZANU-PF of stonewalling on issues like the continuing arrests of pro-democracy activists, lawyers and journalists and the ongoing invasions of white-owned farms...