Forget New York City - the world capital of spend, spend, spend has long been Dubai. This is literally where the sky was the limit, and when they ran out of sky, they simply built out into the ocean.
Thousands upon thousands of foreigners made their way to Dubai to grab their own little bit of the wealth.
Of course, that has all come to a grinding halt. Construction is slowing down, and a general feeling of doom and gloom is descending upon the nation.
Things are apparently so bad, that many expats are packing up their belongings and leaving. Of course, when you leave so suddenly, you tend to forget minor things like your mortgage, your car and your credit card debt.
Dubai International airport is reported to be home to over 3000 abandoned cars from fleeing expats. Some of the cars have apology letters taped to the windows, and others have their maxed out credit cards left on the seats.
The expats leave the nation behind for a few simple reasons - Dubai locks debtors away, and anyone without a job loses their visa. The New York Times reports that parts of Dubai are starting to look like a ghost town, with unfinished construction projects and masses of vacant property.
Things are actually so bad, that the government has been canceling as many as 1500 work visas every single day - a number they don't want to confirm or deny.
Unless things turn around very soon, the entire place is probably going to be doomed - Dubai does not have any oil of its own, and the entire economy was built upon real estate and financial services. Now those 2 sources of cash are slowly disappearing, Dubai could soon make the Madoff scam look like petty theft.
Do you (no longer) live in Dubai? Are things really this bad?
