No Time for Ivory Castles...

...Or Palm-shaped islands in this particular case.

I've already mentioned that the annoyance of economic reality was creeping into Dubai, well now it looks like it's not even making any pretence of trying to slip in announced. It's just coming in like an elephant on crack, although The Daily News uses more polite terms than I.:

• The Palm-shaped islands real estate scheme/project has plummeted in terms of value.
• There are--gasp--layoffs.
• The local government banks are on "credit watch."
• And the government is trying desperately to avoid a fire sale.

On my journeys throughout this world-wide internet, I stumble across the occasional Dubai-advocate (mostly they seem to be tied to Emirates--the local ultra high-service airline), who seems to express complete and total shock that anyone could wish ill-will towards Dubai.

The easy answer is to say that it's schadenfreunde, but it's not quite.

In the race to build the biggest, most ornate, and over-the-top, Dubai Inc. seemed to forget to have a Plan B in place, whereas most other organisations have had to consult their Plan B, C, D, sometimes all the way down to ZZ.

That plus the old saying that "Pride goeth before a fall."