Interesting article, considering how big an investor he has been here in the past: Saudi Billionaire to Wall Street: See You Later http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1841548,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
Why would he invest in a downward economy when the country his living in and has all of the connections.. is growing at a rapid pace ? The guy is a smart cookie! I would think the GDP in that part of the world .. dubai and etc is well north of 10%.
If you haven't been to Dubai, you can't comprehend the astounding wealth and growth. Pictures can't possibly communicate the intensity and scale. Unlike the last oil bubble, they're reinvesting the new money in universities, critical infrastructure, high technology and research parks, and cultivating the most business friendly (as in no taxes, very little regulatory interference) climate in the world. When I was there last, they were constructing, by far and away, the nicest office buildings I have ever seen anywhere - Goldman Sachs had signed a lease for 5 entire floors in one building for a reported $212 per square foot. I've never seen such a swath of high end office building go up at one time anywhere - crane city. Those man-made islands they're building by dredging sand from the bottom of the ocean is creating residential real estate that starts at 10 million dollars USD per 1/4 acre.
The world is changing at rapid pace. While the average young american is an uneducated idiot busy smoking up.. partying at the clubs ... screwing whores.. (myself being one - the screwing whores part as i'm happily engaged) Countries like india, china .. dubai and etc.. are busy building a massive arsenal of highly educated , very intillectual young generation... except this time these countries have a lot of money to put into good use. I think this country needs major changes to the core or else its doomed over time! Majority of the foreign students at our ivy league schools (which is a large %) ... they are all going back home to work this time... and not staying behind!
There's plenty of smart people in America. But just no jobs for them. Guys with MSEE's have to *grovel* for $60k/year jobs, and then kiss the ground every day they're allowed to keep their job. Ph.D's are perpetually kept 'employed' in our universities as postdoctoral fellows, at pay of $30-$40k/year, if even. University degrees and higher education in science have essentially become oaths of perpetual poverty, *not* paths to prestige. Meanwhile those frat boys who whored it up their entire time in college graduate to cushy investment banking jobs where they do very little of value and get paid very handsomely. Its all broken. I graduated just a few years ago in engineering, not a kind of engineering that's related to the energy sector, and I can count on two hands (and my feet) the number of my fellow classmates that are unemployed or underemployed. R&D spending essentially was cut to zero after the collapse of the high tech sector in 2000, and the same thing happened in pharmaceutical research. In the 90s, it was neat waking up, loading up slashdot, and seeing that some researcher had invented something new. I just loaded up the page right now, and here are the stories: "City Sues To Prevent Linking To Its Website" "Citizens Demand To See Secret ACTA Treaty" "Study Finds Video Games Are Not Bad for Kids " "Royal Society "Creationist" Resigns " "Copyright Board Lawyer Responds On Pandora's End " "Congress May Kill NIH Open Access Research Rules " "Mozilla Admits Firefox EULA Is Flawed" "Scott Adams's Political Survey of Economists " Over half of the stories on there relate to political or legal trivialities. No headlines of new inventions, or exciting new things coming out of research. Its quite pathetic really what we've become.
pitz is totally right- there is a bear market in innovation in the US- The ipod is not going to carry it into the 2020.
Actually, he is a lazy, spoiled, vile and a big moron. For proof, just check his answer when asked whether he foresaw this. Let alone bothering to recapitalize Citibank on more than one occasion, considering how that company is run. But he is right to exit, bout time.