The MENA region experienced significant economic growth in the 2000-2008 period, fed by increased oil revenues, remittances and net equity inflows, including a surge of intraregional FDI. During the 2000s, analysts argued that the GCC countries had learned important lessons from the resource-curse cycle of the 1970s and 1980s, namely to invest most of their windfall hydrocarbon revenues, to diversify into non-hydrocarbon-dependent investments, to encourage private sector growth, and to spread their risk geographically. MENA’s investment to GDP ratio increased by 5 percentage points, and GCC intraregional investment to the developing countries of the region rose from $4.7 billion in 2000 to $21.5 billion in 2007. The GCC countries accounted for one-third of total FDI (in dollar terms) to the Mediterranean countries from 2003 through 2007, but most GCC investment in the region actually took place among its own members, and the bulk of investment favored services over goods production. The absolute magnitude of investment was not as great as the increase in remittances or in reserves due to oil revenues, and FDI to the MENA region, outside the GCC itself, was actually a small proportion of all GCC capital outflows, just 11 percent as compared to 73 percent to the West. Furthermore, the distribution of FDI inflows within the region was uneven and consistently favored Saudi Arabia, which received about 33 percent of global FDI flows into the Arab region in 2007 and 2008, and 31 and 38 percent, respectively, of total inter-Arab flows in those years. The MENA region as a whole showed surprising resilience when confronted by the crises of 2008 and 2009, growing by 5.1 and 2.4 percent in those years, and by January 2010, stock market indices were approaching pre-crisis levels. Aggregate inflow of foreign direct investment to the diversified economies, which had been 8.1 percent of GDP in 2008, fell to 4.3 percent of GDP in 2009, but remained positive. On average, GCC GDP shrank by just 0.6 percent in 2009, and current accounts remained in surplus. Overall output was sustained by the non-oil sectors, a consequence of heightened investment in domestic economies in the 2000s, and rapid increases in anti-recessionary government spending. On these grounds, the World Bank and other analysts expect the GCC to lead MENA growth in the post-crisis years. This paper will consider whether intra-regional investment is up to the challenges raised by these expectations.