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I reached a point where I was too busy to post, then, after missing for a couple of months, I was out of the habit.

Dubai is still growing. The metro now takes one all over Dubai, and connects to the new Tram to go places the metro doesn't go.

Oil dropped. There are two prices, Texas and Brent. Some of us remember when Texas oil cost a few dollars more than Brent, but since Obama took office and swore he'd reduce the use of fossil fuels, the US has been increasing oil production by 1 million barrels per day per year. One wonders how much more oil the US would be producing if Obama hadn't fought tooth and nail (as the Tea types tell us) to get the US out of the oil production business?

In any case, Texas oil dropped from about $105 to $40, and is now up to about $49. Brent dropped from about $115 to $43, and is now up to $60. So the Gulf has about half as much money coming in. China and Europe have all that money the Gulf isn't getting, and a lot of them are spending it in Dubai. If Brent were still $115, The people from the Gulf would be spending that money in Dubai. So I haven't seen much impact here. Dubai lives on tourism, not oil, tourism from Europe and the other Gulf countries, so it doesn't matter to the Dubai economy whether Europe or the other Gulf countries have the money, Dubai just changes the decorations to fit the tourists. Which seems to me like a reasonable way to run a city-state: more Athens than Sparta.