TheTradingReport

If you just read American newspapers, you might not know that financial markets around the world plunged over news that the government-owned Dubai World – upon which that emirate’s claim to economic (non-oil) leadership in the Middle East rests — may be on the verge of collapse.  I followed the Dubai story in The Financial Times, which headlined it on its web page from the early morning yesterday. Today, they have a three page spread. And what about the Washington Post? They have a short AP story on page A22. Is it a more important story than the tale of these poseurs who crashed a White House dinner, which is featured on page one? Just maybe. You have to remember that the Great Depression only became “great,” that is, global, when an obscure Austrian bank went under in 1931, and set off a massive financial explosion around Europe.  Capitalism is an irrational system that is often full of unpleasant surprises. The collapse of Dubai World may turn out to be nothing.  But it could also

When Uma Thurman divorced Ethan Hawke because he’d been cheating on her, I remember thinking, “If even Uma Thurman is going to be cheated on, what chance do the rest of us have?” I’m thinking that way about the situation in Dubai: If a country that’s essentially the Cayman Islands of oil money can’t pay its debts, then the rest of the world must be teetering on the edge of a precipice…