Dubai Couldn't Pay $26B. So the Burj Got a NEW Name

Imagine building the tallest building on Earth… and changing its name at the grand opening. Dubai built palm-shaped islands, bought the Queen Elizabeth 2 and a slice of Las Vegas, all on borrowed money. Then, the night before a long holiday, its state giant Dubai World asked to freeze $26 billion of debt. Oil-rich Abu Dhabi paid, the Burj Dubai became the Burj Khalifa, and the twist: $20 billion of that rescue was a loan that took almost fifteen years to start coming back. In this video: 0:00 The name on the door 0:37 Selling the future 2:16 The borrowed sky 3:43 The holiday bomb 5:17 The neighbor with the checkbook 6:50 The bill that kept moving Sources: NBC News/AP (2010); The Globe and Mail; Al Jazeera Arabic; Reuters; Euromoney; The New York Times (2009); MPRA/INCEIF (2009); Gulf News (2020); Bloomberg (2023). #MoneyStories #Dubai #BurjKhalifa 📷 Photo credits (Wikimedia Commons): • Burj Dubai Under Construction on 16 May 2008.jpg — Imre Solt — CC BY-SA 3.0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bu... • ISS-47 Palm Jumeirah, Dubai.jpg — NASA/Tim Kopra — Public domain — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IS... • ISS-59 World Islands, Palm Jumeirah and Palm Jebel Ali, Dubai.jpg — NASA — Public domain — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IS... • RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 in Trondheim 2008.jpg — Trondheim Havn from Trondheim, Norway — CC BY-SA 2.0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RM... • Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan-CROPPED.jpg — Helene C. Stikkel — Public domain — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kh... • Burj Khalifa Night View 01.jpg — Sergei Gussev — CC BY 2.0 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bu...