Thursday, 10 December 2009

Sharing the gain in Dubai also means sharing the pain

If the past couple of weeks have seemed full of controversy over Dubai and its debts, try this scenario for size: imagine that every debt for whatever project, no matter how extravagant, was guaranteed. If companies couldn’t come up with the cash, the Government would, even if it had to fork over barrels of crude oil.

Try to picture the pandemonium that would cause. Anyone with any hare-brained investment scheme could borrow as much as they wanted.

Secure in the knowledge that their debt was guaranteed, they could build edible skyscrapers of Swiss chocolate reinforced with candy canes, so high that on a clear day you could see Riyadh. They could cool them with icebergs towed from Greenland or just let the whole thing melt in summer into a big pile of delicious chocolate-mint rubble.

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