Following a week of unmitigated turmoil in the financial markets, alternative solutions on how financial markets operate should garner new light.

In the aftermath of the Dubai ports controversy, more has been affected than the collapse of the deal. The deal has had a great impact on perceptions of America in the Arab world, and it will potentially have a great impact on international financial markets and political and economic interaction between the west and the Islamic world, especially the Gulf. Now that the dust has settled, we can examine some of the effects of these events, while considering the changing circumstances in the Islamic world.

In his state-of-the-Union speech President George Bush admitted that the USA had an addiction to oil. As with any addiction, the first challenge in overcoming the dependency is for the addict to admit he has a problem. The admission came as Americans faced historically high petrol prices at the pumps (in excess of $3 per gallon) and US oil imports rose to two thirds of total demand. President Bush used the occasion to highlight the need for the US to reduce its dependence on oil imports, particularly from the unstable Middle East, and extolled the virtues of domestically produced biomass-based ethanol as a substitute to petrol.