A 63-story luxury hotel in Dubai, the Las Vegas of the world, burned not far from where the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, celebrated the new year with a dazzling display of fireworks. The cause of the inferno is not yet known, but it caused several injuries and one heart attack.

Surely there is a deeper meaning in the proximity of this fiery catastrophe and fiery celebration. It must tell us something we need to understand about Dubai, a city the was hit hard by the global economic collapse in 2008, but has since bounced back and is set grow an astonishing 5 percent this year. But what could all of this possibly mean?