Perhaps the oddest part of Dubai's financial crisis is that everybody saw it coming. You couldn't sit in the world's grandest hotel, watch the construction of the world's tallest tower, or gape at the indoor ski slopes and behemoth shopping malls without feeling uneasy.

It all felt like too much, too fast. Even many of the Western expats who were lured there for the tax breaks and quick cash often described Dubai as the ultimate house of sand.

Dubai's bubble burst last week with the embarrassing (and market-shaking) announcement that the glitzy emirate's Dubai World development conglomerate had to delay payments on part of its $60 billion debt. Bloomberg quotes an economist as saying that Dubai's economy will take longer to recover from the financial crisis than other Gulf nations that also suffered as crude prices plummeted, international credit dried up and companies tried to refinance debt.

Almost two years ago, I reported a story from the UAE on how Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich capital emirate, was quietly pursuing a long-term development strategy that would position it as more sophisticated and responsible than Dubai.

Of course, people couldn't come out and say that -- Abu Dhabi officials chose their words very carefully when they told me how they didn't want "excess" and "erosion of local heritage." Put simply, they didn't want to be Dubai, although they wanted similar diversity of industry and worldwide renown.

The reluctance of observers to sound the alarm on Dubai was in large part because the eye-popping development was led and fueled by Dubai's emir, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. He detailed his philosophy behind the economic boom in a 2006 book, "My Vision: Challenges in the Race for Excellence."

Therefore, criticism of Dubai's unchecked growth was taboo, hitting too close to the royal family for the sources I interviewed. Even when I wrote a tongue-in-cheek blog post in which someone joked during rare showers in Dubai that rain wasn't in "Maktoum's Vision," a friend sent me a gentle warning to be careful when referencing the royals.

Now, however, angry investors and Dubai's newly unemployed want to hold someone accountable for all the money, and they're looking for answers as to how Dubai is going to climb out of this crisis. After a year or more of humiliating headlines about companies going bust, foreign laborers demonstrating and half-finished skyscrapers dotting the horizon, Dubai observers have become more outspoken in pinning the blame on Sheikh Maktoum's management.

Barbara Surk of the AP has a good story on that issue today. It contains some of the harshest criticism to date of Maktoum, who's reportedly retreated from the limelight, even telling the media to "shut up" in an uncharacteristic outburst in a recet meeting with international investors.

"It will be very difficult for Sheik Mohammed to survive this one," Christopher Davidson, an expert in Gulf affairs at Britain's Durham University and author of two books on the Emirates, told the AP. He said Mohammed misled investors by giving them the impression he had money to back his plans.