While Americans ate turkey and watched football, Dubai asked to postpone paying off nearly $60 billion in debt. That’s fancy talk for “Dubai defaulted.” World markets went low on that news, to say the least: it’s the biggest national debt default since Argentina went through hell in 2001.

These guys plowed in tons of borrowed money into vast construction projects so they’d have the biggest this and the hugest that ever built – and now they’re looking to possibly tip the scales and create the largest global financial cataclysm since, well, last year. While the request was for $59 billion, there’s another $20-$30 billion sloshing around that they need to aggressively refinance. The banks that lent the money are in shaky territory: if Dubai doesn’t come across, they could wind up getting paid pennies on the dollar for their loans and be wiped out. That, in turn, would do damage to the world economy and so on and so on.

So is Dubai too big to fail? Or is it too big to save? Because it’s possible to be both, with the latter taking precedence over the former. Abu Dhabi could cut a check and just buy all of Dubai, but then they’d be stuck with a lot of unfinished, unsustainable construction projects. The real message is that if Dubai’s jitters sent the markets spinning, the world as a whole may not be recovering as smartly as our governments are saying it is.

Right now, we’re at 10% unemployment. While we think of this as bad right now, it may very well be the “passably good” of ten years from now, or even considered great.

I recently read an article that showed how, without a double-dip recession and things working along normally enough after a recovery, we’d be at around just above 8% unemployment in 2020. That’s with Baby Boomers retiring on schedule and normal annual growth in the workforce each year. Should the Boomer stick it out longer, then unemployment will be higher. Same goes for a less-than-average recovery or a dreaded double-dip.

A double-dip recession, which is a very real possibility if the government allows the 2001 tax cuts to expire in 2011, would see unemployment hit 13% and then wend its way down to around 9-10%. This isn’t some sort of crazy conspiracy theory. This is looking at the numbers and assuming normal stuff happens.

The upshot of this is that what we once considered horrendous will soon become normal to us.

Don’t quit your day job.

If companies are reporting higher sales numbers over this time last year, or seeing their sales pick up after a series of rotten months, don’t run out and celebrate recovery just yet: check to see if their competition went bankrupt. Which it probably has. Which is good news for the survivors, but terrible news as far as real job growth goes. With fewer companies in business, fewer total jobs exist – and fewer total jobs can be created in the long run.

Look to sales tax numbers. If there’s more sales tax being paid, then consumer demand – anywhere from 60 to 65% of total GDP – is on the way up. If not, then it’s on the way down. Simple enough, right? Well, let’s look at those numbers… (goes to look at numbers)

Oh dear. They’re not good at all.

Sales taxes in Texas are down 12.8% compared to this month last year, and this month makes five double-digit drops in sales taxes in a row for the Lone Star State. California’s even worse, and all states are in the negative in terms of comparing this year to last year. Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch.

So where do the rosy estimates about national recovery come from? Surveys that ignore small businesses and favor weighting to major retailers who, after closing many stores, are seeing some loyal customers coming back to remaining outlets. But they’re not at all the whole story, as the sales tax receipts show.