Dubai: An Exercise in Human Imagination, And Wishful Thinking

From its inception, Dubai has been the vision of an elite and powerful group that wanted to build a worldwide tourist hub in the middle of a desert. And to do it, they needed money. Those who borrowed, and lent, that now-notorious $80 billion to build this display of nature-thwarting extravagance must have (or should have) known that the entire project was, at its core, a huge gamble.