If Misery Loves Company...

...then Las Vegas should be delighted that it's not the only 1.5-trick, over-speculated, environmentally ridiculous place on Earth where the real estate is in a freefall, overly ambitious building projects have been stalled or canceled and unemployment is exploding. From today's NY Times, with hat tip to Mike_ch who posted the link on Facebook:

Some things are clear: real estate prices, which rose dramatically during Dubai’s six-year boom, have dropped 30 percent or more over the past two or three months in some parts of the city. Last week, Moody’s Investor’s Service announced that it might downgrade its ratings on six of Dubai’s most prominent state-owned companies, citing a deterioration in the economic outlook. So many used luxury cars are for sale , they are sometimes sold for 40 percent less than the asking price two months ago, car dealers say. Dubai’s roads, usually thick with traffic at this time of year, are now mostly clear.

Read it here. And there is Vegas relevance, even if it's not spelled out in the article. The Dubai folks, you might recall, have been MGM Mirage's safety net/ATM. Ut-oh.