There is that remark of Engels to Marx: “Quantity changes quality”. Implicit in that statement is an assumption that more of one implies less of the other. We wonder about that statement in the context of 2020, with all the talk regarding oversupply of real
On one level, the UAE real estate market has been a tangle of paradoxes. Demand for villas have been soaring even as prices fall across the board; office demand continues to fall along with that of apartments, even as transaction volumes rise. Interest rates have
Nobody knows what the exact tally is on the number of projects currently in the process of stalling in Dubai as a result of cashflow problems, and/or as a result of the fallout of the Arabtec liquidation. That score will be tallied in the months
Inflation has always meant flatulence. In the 17th century, the meaning of the word was expanded beyond blowing up of gas to include attitudinal derivatives as bombast and pomposity. It was only a 100 odd years later that inflation focused itself on economic phenomena. Today,
There is a common flaw when it comes to conceiving a bankruptcy law as merely a type of debt collection device. Or as an alternative loss spreading mechanism superimposed on existing companies. Rather, bankruptcy law is best conceptualized as creating and supporting a distinct bankruptcy
One of the central debates in real estate finance is about the role of credit on asset prices and whether they lead to bubbles that inevitably end in tears. This fear goes all the way back to the panic of 1792, when bankers led by
Some historians of economics make a shibboleth of not referring to present economic knowledge in studying events of the past. This is clearly a case of playing “hide the ball”, especially when it comes to addressing the issue of corporate bankruptcies. While there is no
William Hogarth, a keen observer of London and who saw it descend into madness after the South Sea Bubble in 1721, came up with an engraving of the city in the midst of chaos. in the center of the diagram, there is a sign stating
In 1971, capitalism changed forever in the US – and in the rest of the world – when a specific industrial firm was bailed out. That company was Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, and the bailout was in the form of loan guarantees and subsequent equity injections
Standard game theory posits that when people undertake a transaction, the expect to get high value in exchange for the price they pay. Curiously, however, scenarios arise where this is not the case. There are situations where consumers expect low-value payoffs. This strange phenomena (known
