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This is normally a ho-hum day on Wall Street (shortened session, low volume), but the Dubai debt crisis changed all that. Debt crisis? Well, sorta. Dubai World, the investment vehicle for the mega-rich city-state, wants to suspend repayments on all or part of the $60 billion that it owes. Asian markets took a dive - the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong plunged 4.8 percent - and Europe was down sharply in early trading but has since recovered. The Dow appears to be coming back as well. Truthfully, there's a perverse satisfaction watching those Dubai folks squirm a little - their spending orgies over the last decade captured an anything-goes mindset that's helped get us into the fine mess we're in. Even so, when Dubai World can't meet its payments it's a signal - however symbolic - that the world economy is far from recovered. And it's not as if they're providing much information, other than to say that the action was "carefully planned" and aimed at taking decisive action. Right - weren't the Bear Stearns guys saying the same thing? From the NYT:
Dubai's move -- the global high-finance equivalent of a homeowner asking the bank to allow six months of skipped mortgage payments because of a shortage of cash -- sowed fear of a contagion of instability that could roil markets that are only now recovering from the near cataclysm of the last year. "This has sent shockwaves through the markets, even though the problems in Dubai have been known about for two years," Emil Wolter, a Hong Kong-based strategist the Royal Bank of Scotland, said by phone from Paris. "But it is not the trigger for a brand-new crisis. Yes, the magnitude of the situation is dramatic for Dubai. But Dubai is not America -- and a property crisis in Dubai will not cause the same global crisis as a property crisis in the States."
Actually, the long holiday weekend has probably exaggerated the impact because there's so little market action elsewhere. Anyway, the Dow was down about 110 point a little after 8. The markets close today at 10.
*Dow ends the day down 154 points.
Mark Lacter created the LA Biz Observed blog in 2006. He posted
until the day before his death on Nov. 13, 2013.