They have been saying it won’t happen in the Middle East. They have been saying that nothing will touch the growth of Dubai, Riyadh or any of the oil-rich countries in the area. And now, Saudi is showing the first signs of a liquidity problem.

“Interbank rates in Saudi Arabia have more than doubled since early May as credit markets tightened and investors withdrew bets on Gulf states revaluing their dollar-pegged currencies to fight inflation.”

This should be interesting. What happens to Dubai when the speculators can’t make money flipping houses? The same thing that happened in the US – a massive “correction” in the economy, and the possibility of a government bailout. Maybe the housing prices here will finally come down.

UPDATE: Saudi claims nothing’s wrong.

I wish. No, really – KDDI, a Japanese telecom, is offering 1Gbps internet connectivity for less than $60 USD/month. To give you an idea of how fast this is, most university connections are 100Mbps (%10 of the speed) – for on campus connections. That is, from your desktop PC at work to the fileserver (which is also on the same physical campus), it will be slower than the fastest theoretical connection you can get from KDDI. Of course, most places you’d surf to won’t have that kind of speed, but you’ll be ready for anything.

Anyone who doesn’t think voting helps, bear in mind that in 2000, it took 269 votes to determine the election. Some guys at Michigan State University figured out how many vote changes it would take to change the outcome of all the US Presidential elections since 1836.

So, the price of oil had finally come down to under $100/barrel and it seemed like the bank stuff, while bad, was going to be ok. The the banks said, no, just kidding, we’re falling all over ourselves to sell off to the highest bidder, and oil jumped $30 – the single highest increase we’ve ever seen in a day – and the Federal Reserve wants $700 billion USD to do what it likes with.

Everyone keeps saying this is a new Great Depression, and that the end times are near for the US financial sector. I think they forget why banks become illiquid – people think they are. If people think a bank is shaky, they withdraw their money, and the bank becomes shaky. This happened in the late 1990’s with Long Term Capitol Management – they were wildly over-leveraged, and went through $4.6 billion in cash in a few months.

Some of my coworkers here ask what this means for the US economy – and I don’t really know. There are so many pieces inter-connected in global finance that there’s no way to really predict what happens. It’s also going to have a lot to do with how investors, speculators and stockholders react to news on an hour-to-hour basis. Last week’s crisis wasn’t due to loans defaulting. And next week’s crisis will probably have to do more with the human actors than the tangible assets in the system.

So, I was poking around on bluebanana today, and I saw this photography class mentioned. 8 weeks long – they run 3 semesters a year. I’m really into the idea of taking a class or doing a seminar, partly to get me out the funk of the same old things (or not even taking pictures, as it’s silly hot here) but the only other class I’ve seen was at Mall Of The Emirates, and it was an intro/beginners class.

I’ll check it out and post again if it seems to be interesting.

“What’s wrong with America these days,” a friend of mine asked me recently. “Why do Americans keep trying to vote for someone they want to have a beer with, rather than someone they think would be good at leading the country?”

Sadly, I think the answer may be tied up with JFK and television. It’s often considered bad form or sacrilege to say anything bad about John F Kennedy, but if you think about it, he was no statesman. He was a rockstar with showbiz personality, who nearly got us involved in a thermonuclear war with Russia. Why do we celebrate this? What’s so special about him? Why, every election since, has the sound byte become more and more of an issue than any issue we’re having? Why can’t we deal with serious issues – and not be worried about pigs wearing lipstick or the religious convictions of the governor of Alaska?

I think it’s because we’re too caught up in the cult of personality we’ve erected around our elected officials – and the parties they come from – rather than any real desire to elect someone we think would be a good leader for our country. And then there’s all this pressure to vote for one of two candidates – and an implicit assumption that if you are pro-choice, you are also anti-death penalty, and pro-medicare. Or, if you’re for the NRA, you’re also a supporter of the Religious Right and the war in Iraq. Why do we have a two party, winner takes all, system? Why have we married ourselves to this binary approach to governance? Why can’t you pick and choose your issues from a broad spectrum of possibilities? If you were to tell Joe Q Public that come November, they could vote only for Democrats or only for Republicans they’d be pissed – as you are taking their choices away – but tell them on national TV they can only vote for Obama or McCain, and they are ok with it?

Or is this the real reason we have such low voter turnout in the US?

This is just stupid. Two women are fined 1,000 AED (about $272 USD) for drinking juice in public before the sun set, because it’s Ramadan. There’s no way to build a thriving, booming tourist economy when you have laws like this in effect – especially when it’s still well over 100°F every day. Good thing they weren’t hit with the full fine – a month in jail.

That’s a quick way to encourage people to visit this fine country.