Would you know a bubble if you saw one?

The financial crisis emanating from the US is largely rooted in a housing price bubble fueled by low interest rates, rules that allowed zero down and more. Or, as with all bubbles, it certainly looks like a bubble in hindsight.

How about in Dubai? Consider this article from the Wall Street Journal in August 2008:

Property prices, meanwhile, have risen on average by 79 percent since 2007 and 25 percent in the first six months of 2008, according to New York-based investment bank Morgan Stanley.

Home prices on Nakheel's Palm Jumeirah - one of three separate man-made-island clusters in the shape of palm trees off the coast of Dubai - have risen more than 600 percent since sales started in 2002, with some villas that were sold for $700,000 five years ago now attracting offers of more than $3.5 million, according to Dubai-based property agent Better Homes.

"There is a general consensus that certain sectors of the real-estate market in Dubai are currently being driven by speculation rather than market fundamentals," said Craig Plumb, head of research at property and investment-management company Jones Lang LaSalle in Dubai.

Although RERA is looking at measures to restrict flipping, developers also are imposing tougher resale rules. Homeowners at Nakheel's Trump International Hotel & Tower have to wait a year before they can sell their units on the secondary market, and Emaar Properties is restricting secondary sales of its properties until buyers have paid 30 percent of the total cost.

Of course Morgan Stanley itself has been in the news since August 2008.