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US financial markets were closed Thursday for Thanksgiving, and Middle Eastern markets were closed for Eid al-Adha. But in the rest of the known world, markets were plummeting on the news that Dubai and its major corporations, closely linked to Sheikh Mohammed, are unable to repay some $59 billion in debt that will be coming due in the near future. European banks, in particular, were thought to be exposed to high levels of risk , as many of them had borrowed dollars and then turned around and re-lent the money to fuel Dubai's crazed building boom. As is often the case, the Paulick Report picked up on Dubai's troubles quickly, posting an online report from Bloomberg News . The debt default story is getting massive international coverage. See, for example, here , here , and here .) In the grand scheme of things, the couple of hundred million a year that the Sheikh and his associates spend on thoroughbred bloodstock probably doesn't matter much, one way or the other, to Dubai

Initial reaction to the results from Keeneland's November breeding stock sale seem to be determinedly positive. For example, Frank Mitchell's Bloodstock in the Bluegrass blog talks about how "the recession is over," and that there's "confidence in a down market." And Deirdre Biles' Hammer Time blog on the Blood-Horse web site concludes that there's "at least a glimmer of hope" in the market post-November. I guess those views, reflecting the by-now-desperate hope of thoroughbred breeders, are based on the fact that the sale numbers this year declined less from 2008 than 2008 had, in turn, declined from 2007. Small consolation. The 2007-2008 decline was about 40% in average price and 45% in gross for the sale as a whole. In contrast, the decline from 2008 to this year was only 7% in the average price and 14% in the gross. Here are the numbers for this month's sale: of 4702 horses cataloged, 2779 of them sold (59.1% of the catalog)

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