To: Jeffrey Epstein[[email protected]] From: Sultan Bin Sulayem Sent: Thur 11/19/2009 12:19:17 PM Road to Recovery, Part I Posted By Scott MacMillan On November 18, 2009 @ 3:42 pm In Cover Story Regional Special economy I No Comments Bad news is often stickier than good news. Regardless of whether it's true or not, it's something that ertainly holds true for the economic outlook of the Gulf. Dubai in particular has received a severe lashing from the international press since late 2008, with the UAE's largest city painted not merely as victim of the global economic malaise but as a symbol of hubristic overreach that received its •eserved comeuppance. growing number of economists say the pessimism has been overdone and that the picture for the ulf is not nearly as dark as it seemed just a few months ago. Indeed, a consensus is building that ot only is the region headed for robust recovery, but that the silver lining may soon eclipse the cloud tself. Some experts say the Dubai crash, along with the lessons likely to be learned from it, may have even been the best thing that could have happened to the UAE and its neighbors, for if the 2002- 2008 boom had continued, a number of much needed reforms might have been delayed indefinitely, leading to more lasting damage further down the road. o be sure, those interested in the bad news have no shortage of stories to choose from. There's the 10 billion fraud allegation leveled against the head of Saudi conglomerate Saad Group, a scandal hat suggests lending practices at Gulf banks have been less than stringent. •r to take a more recent example, the "travel news" section of The Timesnewspaper recently reported - on tenuous grounds, citing a single unnamed property agent as its source - that Nakheel's landmark island chain development The World had been "canceled," the quoted source adding that he man-made archipelago "doesn't even look like the world" and that most of it resembles "a pile of muck.