{"id":284,"date":"2009-11-30T13:29:15","date_gmt":"2009-11-30T11:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=284"},"modified":"2009-11-30T13:29:15","modified_gmt":"2009-11-30T11:29:15","slug":"284","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=284","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><span style=\"font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;\">Dubai<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;\">When Bear Stearns went down early in 2008, most people thought it was just a straightforward bank failure brought about by careless management. A few, very few, saw it a\u00a0 straw in the wind, later to blow through the\u00a0world financial system with hurricane force. Now we have Dubai, the first country, albeit tiny, in trouble. Again the rationale is explained. Over-gearing, excessive reliance on property, not much oil wealth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;\">So is this a one off? Or are other countries, bigger ones, due to follow? We already have Iceland, but that country&#8217;s economy was its banks. When they went down, there was nothing. Other names are now in the frame. Latvia? Ireland? Could it happen even to us? The answer is yes it could, but it need not. The way to avoid that desperate late night phone\u00a0call to the IMF is to do something meaningful about Government debt. At the moment it just gets bigger.That is the road to Dubai.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;\">If we end up there, it will not just be straws in the wind. There will be flying oak trees up rooted\u00a0 and\u00a0spinning through the air. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman;\">It is important for our leaders to see Dubai as a wake up call.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dubai When Bear Stearns went down early in 2008, most people thought it was just a straightforward bank failure brought about by careless management. A few, very few, saw it a\u00a0 straw in the wind, later to blow through the\u00a0world financial system with hurricane force. Now we have Dubai, the first country, albeit tiny, in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}