Half full or half empty?

A recent poll on expat sentiments have local newspapers split on the proverbial glass:

Emirates Business 24/7:
More than a third of expats in region will opt to stay put

Arabian Business:
One in three expats poised to return home

So what's your take on it? UAE two-thirds full or one-third empty?

Property forums buzz

Dubai dominates property forums for the wrong reasons:

The Dubai property market is hot right now, but not because it is booming. It is exercising a great deal of space in the property forums this week for all the wrong reasons. It is going downhill fast. One particularly worrying aspect is the number of developers who are now admitting publicly that they do not have the finance to continue. The banks won't lend anymore to developers or buyers.
...
A second thread on the same forum gives the full text of a letter sent by London and Dubai-based property wealth manager MiNC, developer of Prodigy 1 in Jumeirah Village South to investors asking for extra payments for apartments to enable it to carry on with the project after two banks withdrew funding.

The letter states that if investors don't pay up then the project will stop. Despite rules to protect investors it would appear that if the investors don't agree to pay more for apartments they have already bought they could be regarded as cancelling their contract and the developer could be entitled to 30% of what has been paid so far.

Does that capture the mood?

Financial crisis - 101

If you are struggling to understand what exactly caused the current global financial crisis, you should watch this video by the IMD in Lausanne / Switzerland.

It's a 15 minute presentation by finance professor Arturo Bris.
After you watch the video, I am sure you will have a lot of questions pertaining to the transparency and financing model of Tamweel and Amlak.