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The Dubai Factor: Another House of Cards ?

The week was short but very interesting. It was only 3 working day week so everyone was looking for Thanksgiving weekend - people deserved a break from all gloomy economic news and looking forward to spend some money on Black Friday. Looking at last weekend collections of "New Moon" (teenage vampire movie) which were 3rd highest on record - it was looking all bright for shopping season. Initial readout from Black Friday sales seem to be promising and most likely this holiday season would end either flat or 1-2 % down from last year's shopping season which in general should be pretty good news (given high unemployment).

Now let's look at "Dubai Factor". IMO, it was just matter of time when over-leverage caught with another house of cards built right in the middle of desert. I think Dubai is great city with tremendous potential. The idea of diversifying from oil revenues to more sustainable industries like tourism, trade and finance should be followed by many other oil producing nations. But Dubai went too far in borrowing $80 B which is more than it's yearly GDP of $75B. And all this borrowed money was used to build man-made islands (Palm, World), tallest building in world and ski-resort - it was trying to create an oasis. Finally the leverage caught up with Dubai and they had to announce "standstill" with its debt-holders. It sent shock-waves across debt and equity markets and wiped out multi-billions.

In big picture, size of Dubai problem is very small ($80B liability compared to over $600B for Lehman). However investors got worried that Dubai may not be alone in this and ran to safety net of treasuries. Who knows - there could be more countries like Dubai (Turkey, Ireland, Iceland, European countries and if you extend this for 10 years or so - maybe USA). I just read that Abu-Dhabi banks are providing liquidity to banks which have lent to "Dubai Inc" - so markets should have positive reaction on Monday. But one should remember that tough times are not completely behind us. When it comes to weekly recommendation, I would recommend staying in cash or putting money in balanced mutual funds I recommended 2-3 weeks back

Let's see if "Sheikh manages to derail Santa Claus rally" which happens every December.

Have a great week !

/Shyam

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