The Dubai Air Show was not a glamorous affair.  When one points to regional orders from Algeria and Ethiopia to mark the highlights for 2009, there is a slight disappointment to be candid.  The total tally tells a similar story, some $5 billion of firm placements vis-à-vis $155 billion from just two years ago.

In comparison to the state of the industry in Europe or America today, the result however was impressive.  We interviewed the CEO of low cost carrier Jazeera of Kuwait and asked him why profits were down 53 percent over the same period last year.  The German executive Stefan Pichler replied in a matter fact fashion: at least we are still making money.

I believe it serves as a good microcosm for the region in general as it searches for the bottom of the crisis.  Businesses are not witnessing runaway growth, but they do see light at the end of the tunnel.  For example, the big brand carriers in the region, Emirates, Ethiad and Qatar are not cutting back their original commitments, only stretching them out if necessary.  It is worth noting that the carriers seem less concerned about posting profits right now, but building out their brands and their market share.

With oil trading around $80 the scope to build off the foundation recently put down is there.  Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum chairman of Dubai’s Supreme Fiscal Committee and Emirates Airline told us that the second half of the $20 billion government bond package should come by the close of the year.  If so, and if there are buyers beyond the UAE central bank, it will be an important indicator.
 
I chaired a forum of business leaders in London this week and found that most believe a firm floor is being put on this economic recovery in Europe as well.  Germany, France and Italy are growing again, albeit all below one percent in the last quarter.  Spain and the U.K., both overly dependent on the property sector, are suffering under the weight of their budget deficits.  It is a similar script being written in the United States. 

But there was categorically a belief there won’t be any hidden surprises, with an important caveat that policymakers may be already planting the seeds of the next financial crisis – in sum too much money thrown at the banking system that will eventually fuel inflation.

Meanwhile, the energy surpluses continue to fuel investments on European soil.  The relatively new investment arm in Abu Dhabi is moving swiftly post-F1 to raise its profile, buying Brawn Grand Prix with partner Daimler.  It also plans to raise its stake in the German industrial group to 15 percent.

Qatar is choosing to continue its investment advances in London.  There is active talk the QIA wants to raise its stake in grocery chain J. Sainsbury and after the Americans leave the posh neighborhood of Mayfair, Qatar will take ownership of the current site of the U.S. Embassy.

These investments may not raise the GDP figures in either Germany or the U.K. but do help us in our search for the bottom.

Looking back on this year to early March, you'll find the precise point when the U.S. stock market seemed to find its bottom. The Dow has had a tremendous rally since then, but just about everyone is concerned about what it means.

Dropping commercial real estate values is leading fears of a double-dip recession.

Does the recovery lack any real support from economic fundamentals? It is jacked-up on stimulus programs that governments will soon try to unwind– and with what consequences?

Many analysts argue that the consequence will be the dreaded double dip.

As Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com, told CNN Money this week: "If we do slide back into recession, it will be very difficult to get out."

Some economists are so concerned they want another round of stimulus early next year because the U.S. labor market is still so weak.

About two months ago, I sat down with Steve Palm of "Smart Numbers," a Real Estate analysis company. He feared that so many commercial developments and large housing projects were defaulting it all but assured a double dip sometime in the middle of 2010. It was a dire prediction that stuck with me.

Checking back with him this week, I am sorry to say that the situation from his vantage point is no better. Palm still sees "Way too much stuff coming back to the banks." "This is causing poor liquidity as the banks still cannot lend. The dollar is way too weak too."

Small regional banks continue to go under across the United States. Most of them are going down because of foreclosures on large commercial real estate ventures. Palm sees no end in sight, and fears that if unemployment keeps mounting and housing indicators start falling again, it will be ample evidence of the "W-shaped" trend that analysts say signals an imminent double dip.

The bankruptcy rate further complicates how to gauge this recovery. As unemployment drags on and home values continue to suffer, personal bankruptcies surged 9 percent in October, with a 7 percent jump in business bankruptcies. The American Bankruptcy Institute also expects total bankruptcies in 2009 to reach almost 1.5 million. That's an increase of 30 percent from last year.

Analysts say given all of these factors, the way governments unwind the current stimuli will be key in determining whether the recovery is sustainable, or whether it slides once again. How will we know? CNN Money.com has a great primer on six key indicators to watch if you're concerned as well.

How to protect our own investment portfolios in 2010 is something we should all be discussing. Stay tuned for more on World Business Today.

How do you find the right financial advice? First find the right financial adviser. CNN's Andrew Steven's reports.

In an special Web exclusive, an extended chat with John Gannon of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority on sussing out the best financial adviser.

After only a year on the ground in Europe as a young twenty-something correspondent, I was thrust into coverage that one knew was not only historic but would have grand implications for years and even decades to come.

I landed in Berlin two days after the fall of the Wall, but was fortunate enough to cover the IMF/World Bank meetings the year before in the same city.  While the institutions are often criticized for not having their finger on the pulse, in this case they were well ahead of the curve on how events were going to unfold.

During those meetings, I ventured over to East Berlin to experience for myself the impact of the communist led economy.  On countless occasions I was approached with whispers in my ears to swap dollars for East German marks on the black market.  Border guards snapped photos of western visitors like me for their files knowing full well that this cat and mouse game was drawing to a close.  One could only describe the experience as grey – from the look on East German faces to the buildings themselves.  

That visit helped me draw a clearer “before and after” picture.  Immediately after the Wall fell, West Germans embraced their neighbors, welcoming them in from the cold.  That euphoria quickly faded when it came to paying the bill for reconstruction, welfare payments and years of double digit unemployment.

The political impact of the fall of communism has been well documented, but what has often been left out of the discussion is the economic domino effect that it triggered.  First and foremost, East Germans were not willing to accept the original 5-1 exchange rate for their currency, nor the 3-1 that was quickly offered.  They demanded parity and within two short weeks received it from German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.  The move cost a fortune (an extra $50 billion) but in an historic context, the Chancellor made the right call.

Events were transforming so quickly, governments had difficulty keeping pace with change: German monetary union, the first all-German elections and fast on its heels the creation of the European single market – project EC (for European Commission)
1992. 

Perhaps because we have the benefit of hindsight and experience, the leaders two decades ago seemed much better equipped, despite fears then of German dominance.  Chancellor Kohl, Francois Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher were the forces to be reckoned with.  They were pushed and prodded along by European Commission President Jacques Delors who drafted up the blueprint for greater expansion of the EU. 

They were thinking big at the time, you could sense that from the summits we covered.  Despite internal fears and haggling that took place, they eventually delivered on their promises.  The Euro is now a major force in global currency markets; the EU is home is 27 countries (albeit with a tinge of expansion fatigue) and it is a market of a half billion consumers. 

Have reforms happened fast enough?  The answer is clearly no.  Is there an issue of illegal immigrants flooding in still through Eastern and Southern Europe?  Ask those who live in Malta, Spain, Greece and Italy.  And are the more mature economies of Europe adapting to increased competition after the lowering of trade barriers?  Candidly no.

But if one takes a step back, many who doubted the decisions in 1989 and the years to follow must now say the European response and development post the fall of communism has been much more successful than originally thought, minus the labor reforms which today still hold back opportunities for the next generation.

Singapore – Alphabet soup is on the menu everywhere here at the APEC summit. Acronyms, painful at the best of times, seem to be used continually by leaders, CEOs and politicians gathered in Singapore. Here’s a guide for those trying to follow the action.

APEC

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, consists of 21 member economies that account for more than half of global gross domestic product – the value of all goods and services a country produces. Members include power players such as the United States, Japan and China and developing nations such as Chile and Indonesia. A key part of the mission: achieving the 'Bogor Goals of “free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific by 2010 for industrialized economies and 2020 for developing economies.”

 Once famously described as"four adjectives looking for a noun,” APEC sometimes comes under criticism for being little more than a talking shop. Members have no treaty obligations and all agreements are non-binding. Still any event that puts Barack Obama and Hu Jintao in the same room is going to attract the world’s attention.

 ASEAN

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN has 10 member states, with a combined GDP of US$1.5 trillion. The group’s mission is to promote economic growth and regional stability. Barack Obama will be the first U.S. president to meet with the group’s leaders, including Myanmar’s Prime Minister Thein Sein. The Obama administration has adopted a policy of engaging Myanmar, also known as Burma, in hopes it will push the country toward democratic reforms.

 TPP

Until a few days ago, the Trans-Pacific Partnership or TPP was little known economic alliance formed between Chile, New Zealand, Singapore and Brunei. Now the U.S., Australia, Peru and Vietnam want to join, with the intention of using the TPP as a stepping stone toward the ultimate goal of free trade throughout the APEC region. This may be the first you have heard of TPP, but I doubt it will be the last.

Singapore – The dirty secret of events such as the APEC CEO Summit is that they are usually scripted, bloodless affairs where any "news" is typically of the tightly choreographed variety.

Exxon Mobil’s Tillerson: Can science predict what will happen with climate change?

So it was a welcome relief that the last session, devoted to the theme "The Shape of Things to Come," bucked that trend. The always provocative Kishore Mahbubani, author of "The New Asian Hemisphere," asked the panelists to speculate on an improbable version of the future.

Rex W. Tillerson, chairman and CEO of the Exxon Mobil Corp., talked at length about the harsh realities of creating and deploying new technologies for the world's growing hunger for energy. For his implausible vision of the future, he offered the following.

"Today, climate change issues so dominates energy policy… the implausible future may be climate change effects don't turn out the way we thought they would, that the climate models simply aren’t competent enough to predict the future.

"Perhaps the Earth has naturally occurring forces that bring it back into equilibrium, and the consequences don’t manifest themselves.

"Or alternatively, perhaps, none of the things we do to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions make any difference, that there are other factors in the climate system that are going to force a change to a warming planet regardless of what we do, which means the glaciers are still going to melt, sea levels are still going to rise, weather patterns are still going to shift."

That prompted a strong reaction from U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.

"I cannot accept the notion or find it implausible that we as human beings have no control over our destiny and that global warming is a natural phenomenon … or that it will suddenly reverse itself," he said.

"I find it implausible and I think unacceptable that we as human beings should simply do nothing about it or have no ability to control our destiny."

Perhaps Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, summed up an unlikely future best: "The most improbable scenario that I could ever imagine... is what we've been through over the last year," he said.

"If you told anyone what we were about to go through the past year, they would have told you you're nuts.

"So we have lived through an improbable year and we must learn the lessons of this extraordinarily difficult period so that we never, ever have to go through it again."

If you thought that lavish bonuses for the financial industry would be a welcome casualty of the current financial crisis, it is time to think again. The New York-based executive search and compensation consultancy, Options Group, put that notion to rest for us in a new report.

Watch CNN's Ali Velshi explain what underlies the return of big bonuses on Wall Street.

Options Group predicts bonuses at financial firms worldwide will increase by an average 40% this year, just months after many of these firms were teetering on the brink of disaster and begging for bailouts.

The report, released this week, says that managing directors in high-yield credit sales will see the biggest bonuses, along with those in commodity sales units. They’ve apparently had a heck of a year. In fact, it is an incredible turnaround in fortunes which came, of course, thanks to a life raft the size of Manhattan!

Still, how could it have happened so fast: A return so promptly to business and bonuses as usual? Interviewed on Monday’s edition of World Business Today, CNN’s Ali Velshi told me, “It’s unusual given the times we are in. It’s less unusual if you’ve been tracking how this market has been doing. When you look at the money these banks are making, they’ve actually made it on trading…. Buying things cheap and selling them high.”

Velshi also points out that many of the big banks making money now have paid back the taxpayer funds they borrowed, and taxpayers have made a profit on those transactions.

However, seven of the big financial firms doling out bonuses are not off the taxpayer’s hook. Their bonuses will reportedly be less handsome.

Velshi says, “Major profits have been taken at companies that have paid that money back… and they want to be free to pay their people. It’s quite a remarkable situation. You wouldn’t have thought six months ago we’d be talking about bonuses that were bigger than last year.”

Some analysts point out that financial firms will offer more in stock and defer more cash payments because of public pressure, and pressure from regulators to pay tie to long-term results rather than rewarding short term risk. That might placate those who believe excessive rewards for short-term risk helped cause the financial meltdown.

Professor Peter Morici, of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, says, “These bonuses show Wall Street is arrogant and insensitive. These bonuses were earned by investing cheap taxpayer funds, and the profits really belong to all Americans. This entire episode is an outrage.”

The U.S. Federal Reserve is planning to review the 28 largest banks to ensure compensation is not rewarding risk; however, global leaders have tried and failed more than once in the past year to agree on what constitutes excessive risk or excessive compensation.

“You only know it,” explained Barack Obama’s pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg a few weeks ago, “Once it’s staring you in the face,” and by then, of course, it’s too late.

So what’s the message here? Let’s just get used to it? The punch bowl is full once again on Wall Street. To paraphrase the much-maligned quotation attributed in London’s Sunday Times to Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein, God’s work is being done. Phew!

So let’s just grit our teeth and pretend we haven’t learned a thing in the past year. There’s no need to wonder what’s going on now; no need to worry about what might be laying the groundwork for the next financial crisis. After all, we’ll know it, once we see it.

I've got my own piece of Berlin Wall stuffed away somewhere in my house. I had borrowed a hammer and chisel from a man at the wall and hacked off my very own piece.

West Berliners crowd in front of the Berlin Wall as they watch East German border guards demolish a section of the wall.

It was a week after "Checkpoint Charlie" - a crossing point between Easy and West Germany - in Berlin had been thrown open, a week after a divided city and a divided Germany were reunited.

I had flown over from London with friends for a first-hand view of history. We arrived late on a snowy Friday evening, found a cheap place to stay and headed out into the night. Every bar, every cafe was packed with exuberant West Germans and uncertain East Germans. But everywhere we went, the air of German brother/sisterhood was palpable. Everyone was so positive. We were all Germans, they told us. It would be a seamless unification. Only a few people voiced their concern about how exactly this would work.

We stayed up all night, drinking and talking to Germans. In the morning we headed for the checkpoint ourselves. It was packed with people; all along the wall people were busy trying to knock it down. One other snapshot that still stays with me is the East Germans pulling overloaded shopping baskets full of consumer goods back across the dividing zone to their homes. Little things like washing up trays for the kitchen sink, boot polish, soft drinks. Anything, as long as it wasn't made in the German Democratic Republic.

We snatched a few hours sleep that afternoon and went back out into the night to join the party. The feeling of optimism was still burning.

Well, as history shows, reunification turned out to be much harder, more expensive and longer than anyone could have seen. A few months after the wall came down I visited the former East Germany working on a story about East Germany Inc. being up for sale. An enormous firesale of outdated factories and machinery. Buyers were only interested in the property, and as long as they could get rid of most of the workforce.

Fast forward to today. Think of another communist economy. And think of the difference. This economy is leading the world out of recession, this economy is, at the moment, one of the great hopes for global economic growth, this economy now lectures the U.S. on economic policy. This economy is China. Two decades ago this day, East German communism was finally put to rest. In China, it's going from strength to strength.

Gary Locke may be the top commerce official in America, but he's a rock star in China.

Locke was a hit with locals on a recent visit to China.

This week, the Chinese-American politician who is now U.S. Commerce Secretary, visited cities in the manufacturing heartland of China ahead of his high-level trade talks in Hangzhou.

Locke is joined by U.S. officials such as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Trade Representative Ron Kirk, and Ambassador Jon Huntsman, who are here meeting with top Chinese officials including Vice Premier Wang Qishan.

I managed to catch up with Locke in Guangzhou, the capital of the province of Guangdong, where his grandfather was born. You would have thought Locke was a celebrity. During his tour of a Sam's Club superstore and a local university, Locke was mobbed by fans, press, and curious on-lookers all eager to catch a glimpse of their hometown hero.

Locke's grandfather lived in a village in this part of China before leaving for the United States in the hope of a better life. Grandfather Locke emigrated to Washington state where he took a job as a servant for a local family who lived one mile away from the Governor's Mansion. I wonder if Grandfather Locke ever dreamed his grandson would be serving people as well - as governor and now commerce secretary.

Locke told me his personal story is "thoroughly American" but that his Chinese heritage comes in handy in trade negotiations here. "I bring, perhaps, a greater understanding of the culture and history of the Chinese people," he said during our exclusive interview.

These days, the U.S. and China could use a little more understanding. Because of the economic crisis, the bond between the two trading partners has been stretched.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration slapped tariffs on Chinese tires sold in the U.S. Soon after, the Chinese threatened to cut off imports of American poultry products and auto parts.

Locke played down fears of a coming trade war. "When you look at the relationship of say brothers and sisters, the relationship when you are small and young might be very simplistic. But as the families get older they get into more complicated issues," he explained. "But it is the sign of a healthy relationship."

Locke insists the trade disputes won't distract the two nations from cooperating on larger issues such as climate change or regional security. However, even before Secretary Locke has left China, Beijing has informed Washington it is launching a trade investigation that could lead to new import duties on vehicles made by Detroit's struggling Big Three automakers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler), according to a U.S. auto industry official.

Hopefully, Locke's experience bridging two cultures will help bridge any economic split.

China = 1.3 billion people.

That’s an equation that intoxicates marketers and drives businesses to invest serious cash in capturing the Chinese consumer.

But experts in brand marketing in China warn businesses not to get dazzled by the numbers. China's consumer market is large, but it is also complex, fragmented and fiercely competitive. If you want a piece of the action, you better do your homework and be prepared to stay for the long term.

Here are a few tips from our experts.

Target your customers

Only 33.5% of retail sales now come from China's top 24 cities, according to a study from Ogilvy & Mather Group China. China's smaller cities and towns are a growing market for foreign brands.

However, consumers in these areas have considerably different shopping habits than those in big cities. They are less hurried, spend more time in public spaces and have limited access to the Internet. Differences like these can be crucial for market strategy.

Regional, cultural and ethnic differences have to be considered as well. Chris Reitermann, President of Ogilvy Shanghai, says focusing on a smaller market segment can pay off more than a broad, unrefined strategy.

Have a local partner

There are a lot of benefits to choosing the right Chinese partner and building a strong relationship with them. GM, a long-term success story in the Chinese market, has made out of its joint ventures with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. "They know the market," says GM marketer Joseph Liu. "They help us on the distribution side. They bring the government relationship which is extremely important in China."

Take your time

Both our experts advise that building a brand in China is an energy and time-consuming business. Liu recommends putting someone in China full time to build relationships. Reitermann says studying the Chinese way of life can help you build a marketing campaign that is sensitive to local culture and appeals to local tastes.