In 1940, the British snatched victory from the jaws of defeat and certain invasion by evacuating 300,000 troops from the beaches of northern France. As we all know, Britain with the help of its allies recovered from the near disaster to eventually defeat Hitler’s Germany and the Axis powers. The rest is history.

Officials in the U.A.E. are now claiming a similar turning point in Dubai’s battle to defeat the all out assault on its economy by the dark forces of the global financial crisis.

http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2010/05/24/dubais-dunkirk-moment/

Abu Dhabi has pumped $15 billion into Dubai since last year, providing proof of the strength of the federation but also evidence of a power shift within the union. The Dubai Financial Market may have lost 25% of its value since November and Dubai World has yet to agree to a deal with banks on its remaining $22 billion debt pile, but the principles of the union have passed a stern test. However, the outcome is likely to be that Abu Dhabi takes a more dominant role in the U.A.E. while Dubai takes a back seat. While Dubai has sold assets overseas to help pay its bills, Abu Dhabi has continued to invest by building stakes in household names like Daimler and Barclays.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703862704575099750771561886.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

The financial crisis and now two criminal cases that have generated critical headlines in other countries have demonstrated that the emirates remain an absolute monarchy, where institutions are far less important than royalty and where the law is particularly capricious — applied differently based on social standing, religion and nationality, political experts and human rights advocates said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/world/middleeast/22uae.html

Since then, residential real-estate prices in Dubai have slumped by almost 50%. Developers have slashed jobs and scrapped projects. Groundbreaking on the tower was long ago put on hold. The yearlong retrenchment culminated in last week’s surprise announcement that Dubai would seek to restructure $26 billion of debts owed by Dubai World, the holding company for many of the government’s port, infrastructure and real-estate businesses.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125988807548075805.html?mod=rss_Today%27s_Most_Popular

Last Wednesday, Dubai asked to be excused six months of payments on a debt of fifty-nine billion dollars owned by Dubai World, the state-backed conglomerate. Yesterday, Dubai’s stocks fell 7.3 per cent; today they fell another 5.6 per cent. And the Gulf News, an English-language Dubai newspaper, has reported this online with the headline: “UAE markets bounce back at the end of trading sessions.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/12/dubai-in-debt.html