Dubai Debt Doubts Spook Markets

Fear rushed through European and Asian stock markets this morning as investors weighed the potential ramifications of Dubai World not being able to meet its debt obligations, the Wall Street Journal reports. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 lost 3.2 percent, its biggest one-day decline in almost eight months, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 4.9 percent. Euro markets also were down by about 1 percent in early trading. "The lack of information about Dubai’s flagship government-owned holding company, made worse by a religious holiday in the Middle East, prompted indiscriminate selling of stocks linked to the region," the Financial Times writes. Bank stocks got hit hard amid the confusion as  to when and if Dubai World (burdened by $59 billion of liabilities) could repay the loans it took to fund the massive tourism and business expansion of the oil-strapped Gulf state. Major banks in Australia were all down sharply while in Hong Kong, HSBC fell 7.6 percent  and Standard Chartered 7.4 percent. The one major winner was the yen, which climbed against the dollar, but that poses only bad news for Japan's slowly recovering economy, Bloomberg writes.

You might not have noticed on a personal level but the banks are back in the lending game— big time. JPMorgan Chase is "ponying up $2.85 billion in financing to Denbury Resources Inc. as part of the oil producer's takeover of Encore Acquisition Co.," while Goldman Sachs  has committed more than $3 billion in debt to help private-equity firm TPG Inc. and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board take prescription-drug data provider IMS Health Inc, the WSJ writes. Then there's Hershey, which has called upon JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America to help with $5 billion apiece in financing if the chocolate maker decides goes up against Kraft in a bid for Cadbury. Wall Street bankers concede that the renewed interest in acquisition financing "could backfire if the market turns lower, sticking them with bonds that are highly vulnerable to economic turmoil," so they are taking on less risk at present until they see the economy truly bounce back, the paper writes.

Amid the countdown to the Copenhagen climate talks, China announced it will set new targets to slow the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, just one day after the Obama administration set a provisional target for reducing United States emissions, the New York Times writes. Unlike the U.S. and most other nations who have set their targets based on reducing total emissions, China will focus on improving energy efficiency. China aims to "cut emissions of carbon relative to economic growth by 40% to 45% by 2020 compared with 2005 levels," the Guardian explains, noting that like President Barack Obama, Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao also now intends to go to to Copenhagen.

If you're not already at the mall ,you might be disappointed in your quest for a Zhu Zhu. Yep, the motorized hamsters already have established themselves as the "undisputed kings of Black Friday," according to CNN Money. "Zhu Zhu fanatics were so numerous on Thanksgiving night, that they were given their own line in front of the flagship Toys R Us store in New York's Times Square," it writes.

And finally, while we're on the subject of treadmills, we have a bit of news of our own. After nearly 15 months of getting up early each morning to scour the daily business press we're stepping down from our media digesting duties. But you haven't got rid of us completely because, starting in December, we'll be launching a new Big Money blog all about the ways social media is shaping business at an executive level.