Word: boom
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...staring at a double-barreled gun. While their policies caused the drop in oil prices from $28 per bbl. to $10 per bbl. over the past six months, that decline has cut deeply into the kingdom's revenues. Compounding its woes has been the continued collapse of a building boom that transformed the desert nation (pop. 6 million) into a land of superhighways, high-rise offices and shopping malls. At the same time, recent successes of Iran in its war against Iraq (see following story) have made the security-conscious Saudis extremely nervous. By invading Iraq's Fao Peninsula last...
Domestically, the ruling House of Saud faces some rising discontent from a middle class that remains shut out of political power. In what remains a largely feudal society with a complex system of consensus building, the technocrats and businessmen who emerged during the boom years lack modern forums in which to vent their views sufficiently. Many young Saudis, particularly those educated in the West, are increasingly frustrated by their elders' refusal to allow them any governmental voice...
Many Saudis view the end of the oil boom as a return to quieter and perhaps even better times. The sudden great wealth created social tensions that should be relieved in a less affluent period. "Those times before were not normal," says one Saudi businessman. "They were not real." A longtime British resident offers a similar perspective: "Patterns of life are traditional here, and the entire fabric still fits very well together. The system has been in place for 200 years, and people feel very comfortable with their government and their religion. What alternative has been offered?" Yet that...
...most patient scrutiny in contemporary art. The panoramic view of downtown Madrid that is the show's centerpiece took eight years to finish, from 1974 to 1982. Muted and austere, almost palpably grimy and smoggy, it sets forth miles of the dull high-rise architecture of Franco's economic boom with a dedication to truth that surpasses Canaletto...
...those citizens of the oil patch with long memories, boom and bust cycles are as natural as Texas tumbleweeds and summer windstorms. What is different about the current collapse, though, is the speed with which it struck. Says Historian Fehrenbach: "Nothing in the past has come on as fast as this." For the moment, then, people can do little more than hold on, hoping that the cycle will one day turn again...