DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Drive by Media City and into Internet City here and be dazzled at the giant signs above the buildings. There’s CNN and MSNBC, and there’s Microsoft, Oracle, and Acer.

Not too far away is Financial City, with Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and more investment-banking muscle. All the elegant signs shimmer under the scorching sun, which bakes the super-modern air-conditioned buildings these international powerhouses inhabit. But wait a minute – are they really there? Is anyone inside?

Nope, this is a bit of trompe l’oeil decor meant to suggest a far greater presence, indeed a headquartering, that is simply not the case.

Once inside, the visitor will quickly discover a few representatives, or perhaps a service person. That’s it.

Trompe l’oeil also applies to the region’s mind-boggling real estate construction. All over Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain, new marinas, huge luxury buildings, representative offices for big Western brands, and enormous billboards trumpet a China-like miracle development story.

A trillion tons of sand have been dug up and dumped right into the waters of the Persian Gulf without a single environmental or tsunami-related question asked.

What if the sand sinks in, as it has in Dubai and Jeddah before? What if a tsunami whips at those newly created artificial islands? Why build in the sea when there are endless stretches of empty desert lands? And, above all, who is this all for?

The answer almost invariably is the same: “His, or her, royal highness wished it to be so.”

Herein lies the problem. The huge oil revenues that have been pouring in for two years have nowhere else to go but into more and more real estate speculation. It makes for great business for the developers and their Western and Asian contractors, as well as for the owners – the sheiks, kings, emirs, and their big businessmen friends who own the deserts on which these mirage-like projects are being erected.

The formula from their perspective is straightforward: Sell desert land to investors at a premium. Then double the profits by financing the construction of artificial islands, lakes, and massive air-conditioned shopping malls, alongside pie-in-the-sky projects like the largest ski slope in the desert, a Jurassic Park complete with mechanical dinosaurs right out of the movie, and millions of housing units. Then get the hell out and let them eat cake.

But it’s clear the emperor has no clothes. Real estate has stagnated; prices are heading down. The same goes for stock markets in the Arab Gulf region, which last year and this year have dropped by more than 60%. It is, and was, all about speculation on very little. Industry is not the hallmark of the Middle East’s desert lands, nor is agriculture, software, or hardware. When investors make nothing, they can only speculate so much before the crash.

“What you see is not what you get” might be a better description of the big oil boom in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the smart sheiks who sold the desert are moving their money out into the real world.

Take Sheik Mohammad Bin Rashed Al Maktoum, the guy from the Dubai Ports episode – as well as the emir of Dubai and the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates. Before and after the Dubai Ports acquisition – itself a $7 billion investment essentially in Britain – Sheik Bin Rashed bought the Tussauds Group for $1.5 billion, the Essex Hotel in New York and other American real estate properties for $1.5 billion, and a group of hotels in Europe and Asia for another $2 billion. In other words, the sheik invested his profits from selling Disneyland desert fantasies in enduring assets outside the Gulf.

It’s hard to feel any affection these days for the “Lawrence of Arabia”-style reporters writing about the world’s largest artificial ski resorts, tallest buildings, biggest marinas, and hugest shopping malls. They all suggest that a magnificent civilization is rising on the shores of the Persian Gulf. My advice is to look deeper.