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In fact we're going to see a great difference between those nations that invested the "money from the ground" to develop an economy and those who used it to buy soccer teams.

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Football teams at a certain scale can be self-sustaining PR machines. Take Manchester United or Real Madrid: they largely make enough money to stay afloat and competitive, while at the same time opening a lot of doors for their owners/controllers. Man United is even an actual profit generator for its owners.

I think a bunch of those flashy oil-money acquisitions that were seen as wasteful, will eventually be recognised as a decent diversifying strategy in sectors where barriers to entry are very high. The Emirates airline was initially seen as a white elephant, but it kickstarted the Dubai hub and was, overall, a pretty strategic move.

But they are small potatoes compared to national budgets.

I mean, the whole world is becoming increasingly 'top heavy', with economic growth going primarily to those who own stock. Just owning successful companies isn't more difficult than pumping money out of the ground - neither requires much nation building. And Saudi Arabian royalty has already been out for years investing in Silicon Valley - I think they're content to jump on the wagon of companies that are already successfully extracting money from the western middle class, rather than try to build up a middle class and well-functioning society of their own.

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