Dude, where's my car?

When Simon Silvester gave his presentation on marketing in a recession, he pointed to a recent phenomenon that I had not heard of:

Thousands of people are abandoning their cars at the Dubai airport.

Why? Apparently, it's illegal to have negative assets in Dubai (not a bad policy, in my opinion), and expats who were hoping to make a killing in construction are faced with fleeing the country or jail time.

Simon shared three facts about recessions:
1. They are frequent (the US has seen 28 since the 1850s).
2. They are short (typically lasting 11 months).
3. They are all different from each other (this may be the first where cars are abandoned at airports).