Dubai Debacle: Weekend Reading

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Good Sunday afternoon and welcome to another edition of Weekend Reading. First a look back at the week that just finished, then a look forward to the week ahead, and, finally, a summary of articles and papers worth reading.

It was a down week for the major markets, with most of the damage (at least in the U.S.) happening at the end. (See the table below.) The cause, of course, was Dubai World's unhappy decision to try to push out some sizable debt payments, which led, of course, to oodles of noodling about cascading defaults, more bank troubles and so on. Gold soldiered on through all of this, setting a new record on the week, before settling back a little on Friday.

Looking ahead to next week, there are two big situations to watch. First is the continuing fallout from the Dubai debt kerfuffle on Friday, which could continue to spread into this week. Mind you, over the weekend it became clear that Dubai banks wouldn't be left to completely founder, with the UAE among others making generally supportive sounds. The other thing to watch next week will be a Ben Bernanke confirmation hearing on Thursday, which will almost certainly be noisy, strident and unhappy, with lots of YouTube-ready clips for the many detractors of the Fed, Bernanke and Congress.

Turning to economic indicators, anecdotal evidence is that U.S. shoppers turned out in large numbers on Friday, but investors will be looking for hard data on Monday. Next week we will also see nonfarm payrolls for November, which are expected to have declined by 120,000. I'll go out on a limb here and say the report surprises with a smaller-than-expected decline.

As for earnings, it will be a slow week. Reports to watch include Staples(SPLS), Aeropostale(ARO) and a clutch of Canadian banks, like National Bank, Royal Bank of Canada(RY), and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce(CM).