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Collated picture by Sigit Mursidi from: die Zeit, der
SPIEGEL and various other sources.
Financing the Superlatives
December 16, 2009
That finally
Dubai’s sand castle came crumbling down is not a surprise to me, that
it became such shocking news and that finally
Abu Dhabi bailed it out is. But,
isn’t it so obvious that it is coming? Aren’t we all craving
for the sensational news to jack-up our adrenalin, lest life will be
too bland? A good, hardworking, and responsible
worker who brought an-honest-to-goodness salary home is no news; a
certified crook that run a seven-layer Ponzi scheme and living on his
harem yacht somewhere in the Pacific is.
This past three
years we have been reaping what we sow in the past decade: starting
with the hikes in commodity and oil prices, the sub-prime, the
Madoff fiasco and
its Lebanese
version, the
hotel that flies at a cost of
over 330 million US a pop; and lately, the “Oasis of the Seas” that
costs 1.4 billion of 2006 US Dollars. There is no shortage of
supplies. “You didn’t give me any alternative!” my Aunt
said. Some even invested in building
tunnels. You got it right, tunnel. The
question is where to dig it.
I found it hard
to reconcile the fact that the world would still finance those
superlative business plans while at the same time workers in Nairobi or
Jakarta has to work four (4) times longer than average 40 minutes to
afford a
Big Mac, even when,
according to March 2009 figures, the burger served in Jakarta (at
$2.05) is undervalued by 49% from the actual dollar price in the
US($3.57).
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