Here are my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 10am. I welcome your additions and comments below or please email your suggestions for Thursday's Top 10 at 10 to bernard.hickey@interest.co.nz Our choices are never sub optimal. 1. The Exodus - Simon Collins at NZHerald picks up on a couple of studies that appear to show that not only are our best and brightest going to Australia, but also our less skilled, more manual workers. It seems the most skilled NZ migrants go to Europe and the United States. One in seven Maori now live in Australia, compared with one in eight non-Maori New Zealanders. 24% of all tertiary educated New Zealanders now live overseas, an OECD study in 2005 found. When are our politicians going to see an urgent problem to be dealt with? Or will we see our young continue to vote quietly with  one-way tickets.

The two new studies appear to confirm what Mary Power, a professor at Bond University in Queensland, described as a common Australian "myth" that Kiwi migrants tend to be less skilled than average. But the experts do not know whether Australia is more attractive to the less skilled, or whether they go there only because they can't get in to other countries. More highly skilled migrants tend to go to the United States or Europe.

2. Cracking graphic - The New York Times has produced this great graphic of where the sovereign debt timebombs might be hiding. Greece looks much uglier than Dubai. Click on the graphic for a bigger version. HT David via email.

3. Who's next? - The New York Times' Graham Bowley and Catherine Rampell have written an excellent piece on the weight of debt dragging on the global economy and how Dubai's debt problems have refocused attention on the connection between governments and apparently government-backed corporates. Dubai has now cut loose Dubai World, shocking those who thought it was government backed. Russia is most exposed and 'spreads' measuring the risk for corporates vs government debt is rising rapidly.

The most troubling case in Russia is Rusal, the world's largest aluminum company, which owes $16 billion and has been in a standstill on repayment this year while dealing with creditors. A subsidiary of a Russian state aircraft manufacturer defaulted on bonds last autumn despite a presumed sovereign guarantee. In Ukraine, the state energy company, Naftogaz, and a state railroad, have restructured or asked to restructure their debt. "This was a trail that was blazed in this part of the world," said Rory MacFarquhar, an economist at Goldman Sachs in Moscow, referring to governments retreating from implied guarantees of state company debt, as in the case of Dubai World. The Dubai World debt restructuring is already lifting borrowing costs for Russian companies that must repay a total of $20 billion in December, according to Vladimir Tikhomirov, chief economist of UralSib bank in Moscow.

4. Dubai vs Abu Dhabi - It seems Abu Dhabi is playing a big game of chicken with Dubai, while Dubai is itself playing a game of chicken with Dubai World, the New York Times reported. HSBC, Standard Chartered and Barclays are owed a combined US$28 billion. Good luck with that. No doubt some high priced UAE lawyers are about to make a killing.

After Dubai World, the chief investment vehicle for Dubai, set off turmoil in global markets last week, many traders and bankers here had been expecting a reassuring statement from the federal government in Abu Dhabi aimed at stemming unease. Instead, there was a deafening silence, setting off further speculation about a possible rift between this struggling city-state and oil-rich Abu Dhabi. Insiders said Abu Dhabi "” which bailed out Dubai to the tune of $10 billion earlier this year "” might be seeking greater economic or even political control over Dubai as the price of additional succor. As if underscoring the difficult negotiations over rescheduling the debt, the Dubai government reiterated on Monday that it would not guarantee the debt. Although investors knew that Dubai did not officially guarantee the company's debt, the emirate does own Dubai World, and many here have counted on it to guarantee the entity's debts in an emergency. Now that so much of the holdings of Dubai World, mostly real estate, have gone south, niceties like who is legally liable for those loans matter here like never before.

5. Matt Nolan at TVHE has a bone or three (10 actually) to pick with Rod Oram's column in the Sunday Star Times about the need for monetary policy reform. Here's the conclusion.

Ultimately, we can make a case for a change in prudential regulation and tax policy in New Zealand on the basis of our completely different assumptions. However, I don't agree with the blame you have placed on the shoulders of the OCR. Monetary policy is being blamed for a bunch of bad policy both domestically and internationally, blame it does not deserve. It is receiving the blame because it can't really answer back for itself. So lets sit down and try to figure out the real issues that could be hurting New Zealanders, instead of running with the monetary policy scapegoat.

6. It's an emergency - Paul Krugman, who is watched closely by Barack Obama's White House, has made an impassioned plea in the New York Times for an emergency jobs programme in the United States. I like putting the e on the end of program for a US story. Obama is holding a jobs summit on Friday.

It's time for at least a small-scale version of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration, one that would offer relatively low-paying (but much better than nothing) public-service employment. There would be accusations that the government was creating make-work jobs, but the W.P.A. left many solid achievements in its wake. And the key point is that direct public employment can create a lot of jobs at relatively low cost. In a proposal to be released today, the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, argues that spending $40 billion a year for three years on public-service employment would create a million jobs, which sounds about right. Finally, we can offer businesses direct incentives for employment. It's probably too late for a job-conserving program, like the highly successful subsidy Germany offered to employers who maintained their work forces. But employers could be encouraged to add workers as the economy expands. The Economic Policy Institute proposes a tax credit for employers who increase their payrolls, which is certainly worth trying.

7. A bit whiffy - Marla Singer at Zero Hedge has an interesting and detailed piece about AIG that includes a warning that the US Federal Reserve is facing margin calls by struggling European banks. There is a bit of a whiff of a conspiracy theory buried in there, which I'm always wary of. That's because I'm a cock up theorist rather than a conspiracy theorist. But it's a good read and the detail is curiously worrying.

Will the Fed post collateral if deteriorating credit conditions at AIG (today's -$11 billion insurance default fear news suddenly seems especially daunting if the potential insurance shortfall has an effect on credit ratings) or general credit market issues require it? Or are we missing something significant? By September 30, 2008 AIG had already posted $974 million in collateral for its "Foreign Regulatory Capital" portfolio. What if European banks are hit with more losses from, oh, we don't know, say... Dubai? Deleveraging, risk reduction and credit tightening would have an effect on LIBOR, the Eurobond market and, of course, Eastern Europe. Might not that sort of contagion easily spread to, say, Switzerland, which enjoyed the other side of the carry trade for years by lending Swiss Franc like mad to any Eastern European mortgage borrower who could sign documents? Could it be that the Fed, once again, might have to bail out the world?

8. US default prediction - 'DailyWealth' at The Market Oracle points out the startling fact that the United States needs to borrow US$3.5 trillion next year (30% of US GDP) to roll over short term debt raised this year and pay for next year's deficit. Who will pay? A default is guaranteed, according to a formula from Alan Greenspan (!) HT Troy Barsten via email.

How did we end up with so much short-term debt? Like most entities that have far too much debt "“ whether subprime borrowers, GM, Fannie, or GE "“ the U.S. Treasury has tried to minimize its interest burden by borrowing for short durations and then "rolling over" the loans when they come due. As they say on Wall Street, "a rolling debt collects no moss." What they mean is, as long as you can extend the debt, you have no problem. Unfortunately, that leads folks to take on ever greater amounts of debt... at ever shorter durations... at ever lower interest rates. Sooner or later, the creditors wake up and ask themselves: What are the chances I will ever actually be repaid? And that's when the trouble starts. Interest rates go up dramatically. Funding costs soar. The party is over. Bankruptcy is next. When governments go bankrupt, it's called a "default." Currency speculators figured out how to accurately predict when a country would default. Two well-known economists "“ Alan Greenspan and Pablo Guidotti "“ published the secret formula in a 1999 academic paper. The formula is called the Greenspan-Guidotti rule. The rule states: To avoid a default, countries should maintain hard currency reserves equal to at least 100% of their short-term foreign debt maturities. The world's largest money-management firm, PIMCO, explains the rule this way: "The minimum benchmark of reserves equal to at least 100% of short-term external debt is known as the Greenspan-Guidotti rule. Greenspan-Guidotti is perhaps the single concept of reserve adequacy that has the most adherents and empirical support." The principle behind the rule is simple. If you can't pay off all of your foreign debts in the next 12 months, you're a terrible credit risk. Speculators are going to target your bonds and your currency, making it impossible to refinance your debts. A default is assured. So how does America rank on the Greenspan-Guidotti scale? It's a guaranteed default.

9. Seven stories Barack Obama doesn't want told - This is a bit off the beaten track, but entertaining nevertheless. John Harris at Politico has some insight into the problems Barack Obama is having convincing Americans he's a good president. Essentially, they now think he spends their money on rich Wall St types, loves himself, can't empathise with real Americans, is surrounded by mates from Chicago and is less effective than Nancy Pelosi. I reckon Obama is a liar and a fool. The more I see of his actions, the more certain I am about this.

It's a common theme of Washington buzz that Obama is over-exposed. He gives interviews on his sports obsessions to ESPN, cracks wise with Leno and Letterman, discusses his fitness with Men's Health, discusses his marriage in a joint interview with first lady Michelle Obama for The New York Times. A photo the other day caught him leaving the White House clutching a copy of GQ featuring himself.

10. Utterly irrelevant video - Bohemian rhapsody is butchered again in this 'Bohemian bankruptcy - a Tragedy by Drag Queen'. 'Any way the cash flows doesn't make a difference to me...to me'. HT Eva via the Rates Blog.