“First there was the McDonald’s theory of international relations; now there is the Starbucks recession indicator. The theory, first expounded in Slate.com, goes something like this: countries with high numbers of United States coffee chain Starbucks outlets are more likely to have suffered financial meltdowns because the outlets are an indicator of connections to the damaged American financial system.”

“The US, Britain and Australia have suffered from the credit crunch, while those without the coffee chain, such as Argentina, Brazil and Italy, have remained largely untouched. New Zealand is well-off for Starbucks, with 42 for a population of four million. If the theory has any validity, it follows that New Zealand’s recession, which officially started in September, will be a bad one.”

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominionpost/4776491a6034.html

– mind you, Wellington itself doesn’t have too many Starbux does it? I only know of one in Welly – at the bottom of the Majestic Tower, and its always looking deserted.

“Moscow super skyscraper halted

The Russian company building Europe’s tallest building has halted work on the project, citing the global financial crisis. The Norman Foster-designed Russia Tower being built in Moscow’s new central business district by developer Russian Land would be 600m (1,970ft) high.

Company head Shalva Chiriginsky said that work was being halted because of the credit crunch.
Norman Foster and Partners told the BBC it had not been informed of the freeze.

The tower was due to be completed by 2012 as part of the new business district dubbed Moscow City. Building work started in September 2007.

It would have 118 floors with housed offices, a five-star hotel and residential apartments.
Moscow is already home to the tallest building in Europe, the 268-metre Naberezhnaya Tower.

Announcing that there were also difficulties with another of the company’s big Moscow projects, the reconstruction of the Russia Hotel, Mr Chiriginsky said his company was having to cut its workforce.
He told Interfax, one of Russia’s most trusted news agencies, that Russian Land projects had “suffered” from being directed at the “super-luxury” segment of the market.

“Our problem is that we cannot carry out these projects in the current economic situation and given the current state of financial institutions in the country and abroad,” he said.
“The interest rate is high and there are no credit resources.”

Nobody at Russian Land was available to speak to the BBC on Friday.
Asked about Mr Chiriginsky’s comments, a Norman Foster Partners spokesperson in London replied: “We haven’t received any instruction about the project being on hold.”

http://www.theage.com.au/national/architect-canaries-laid-off-20081031-5fka.html

“Architect ‘canaries’ laid off
Ben Schneiders
November 1, 2008
BIG architecture firms, regarded as the building industry’s “canary in the coalmine”, have started shedding staff rapidly. One source put the Melbourne job losses at more than 100, with such firms as John Wardle, Hassell, Bates Smart, ARM and Hayball all believed to have made cuts.

Smaller firms have also been letting people go. One senior architect, who asked not to be named, said the cuts followed a slowdown, where clients deferred major projects. Architecture was “very sensitive” to economic conditions, he said, as an expansion or new project was one of the first things that households or big firms shelved.”

Speaking of ground-breaking: there are reports that the concentration of load caused by the Burj Dubai has potential to cause local area earthquakes in the earth’s crust – structures like the 3 Gorges Dam in China have already been having that effect as well.

Possibly a good reason we don’t try to do the same along Lambton Quay, seeing as the crust is a wee bit shaky there already…..

http://www.realtyna.com/dubai_real_estate/dubai-future-projects.html

when you look at it from a sane distance, its no wonder that world is in financial turmoil: and if your theory is right, Dubai must be due for a massive financial melt-down all of itself…

http://www.fahad.com/2008/09/dubai-city-tower-proposal-for-24km-high.html

Now – that link is somewhat misleading – its only for a 2.4 km high tower, not 24 km high, but that’s still quite tall:
“Dubai City Tower (also called ‘Vertical City’) is an architect’s proposal that began circulating in emails and at a skyscraper forum published in August 25th, but its origins are yet to be determined.

The professional project pitch details 400 habitable stories, topped by a 400m energy-producing spire, making it 2.4km high. The tower is proposed to be sited along the Arabian Gulf where part of the building could push into the ocean creating a marina and a destination for cruise ships and tourism. The proposed tower is organized into four 100 story “neighborhoods” connected via a vertical bullet train that quickly distributes people between Sky Plazas that separate the different vertical neighborhoods.

By comparison, Emaar’s Burj Dubai is largely predicted to be around 800m high and 160 floors.”

I’m not sure that counts though.

Assuming therefore that the next big fashion thing will be a floor length skirt heralding the depth of the coming recession / depression, coupled with a proposal for a ground level building instead of a skyscraper, we should have this economic forecasting fixed.