"Money is the medicine," said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
"But the countries have to change their habits if they want to recover."
The money is there; credit has returned to many parts of the global economy and so has growth, according to the latest report from the IMF. The fund projects that the global economy will grow by 4.8 per cent this year. For the UAE, the IMF has revised its earlier projection upward to report that GDP will grow by 2.4 per cent in 2010.
By no means is the IMF, or any other group of analysts, predicting a boom for the UAE. But these numbers do project a return to sustainable growth and an impressive turnaround from last year when the UAE economy contracted by 2.5 per cent.
The re-organisation of Dubai World's debts is a particular reason for their confidence in the economy. The IMF also cites an uptick in Asia's demand for goods and an increase in oil prices as reasons for the more positive outlook. But for the UAE to grow in the longer term, Mr Strauss-Kahn's advice that "countries have to change their habits" might also be taken to heart.
Changes in habits must be institutionalised for economic growth to be sustained and to avoid the wild swings that create dangerous bubbles in prices. The development of a country's soft infrastructure - its rule of law, financial regulations and human capital - can appear less important than the construction of modern airports and skylines. There will be a concrete cost to pay in lost investments and opportunities, however, if this infrastructure is not strengthened.
The economic recovery gives countries breathing room to plan for the longer term and reassess priorities. The prospectus that Dubai released last week to potential investors showed that the emirate had done much of this hard work.
Dubai showed how much debt was still outstanding, how many projects they had decided to discontinue, and their decision to invest in the emirate's traditional strengths: retail, trade and transport. That standard of transparency, along with improved corporate governance and law, is the medicine the UAE economy requires to remain dynamic.
