Nothing appears on my desktop

Question

Here's an oddity that I can't figure out:
I have a new MBA 11" running 10.8.4. After a day of playing with it, I used Migration Assistant to copy data via a Time Machine Backup (which was the only method I could use, given the limited ports on the MBA, and a refusal of at least one of my machines to allow the process via my Airport Extreme Base Station). I migrated the data from an 11" MBP running 10.6.8.
The problem: if I go to Finder and open a new Finder window, and navigate to my Desktop folder within that finder window, I can see all of the contents of my Desktop that I migrated. However, if I go to the actual desktop, nothing is there. It's compelely blank.
I first thought that perhaps the contents were "off screen" as might happen if I had plugged in an external monitor and everything was moved to that expanded area, then the monitor unplugged. However, I never had an external monitor attached. Nonetheless, to test this, I tried to arrange everything under the "View" menu, but nothing happened. Command-A to select all, even though I couldn't see anything, and tried it again. Nothing.
Then I tried to create a new folder on the desktop, and got a pop-up window: The operation cant be completed. An unexpected error occurred (error code -8072). I opened a Finder window, navigated to the Desktop folder, and created a new folder without any problems.
I first thought that it has something to do with incorrect permissions, but permissions look right. I created a temporary user, full admin rights, and logged into that user. Desktop was normal -- I could create new folders on it, the contents on the Desktop were the same as what appeared in a Finder window when I navigated to the Desktop folder. That user having checked out, I went into terminal and checked the permissions on this Temp User's Desktop compared to my account's Desktop, and they are the same: "drwx-----+".
Also, I'll add that when I navigate to my main account's Desktop folder via Terminal and list the contents, it is correct -- everthing is there.
Thus, my current thought is that there is a mapping problem. The wrong folder is being displayed as the visual representation of my Desktop folder. Is that possible?
One more bit of information: when I first booted the new MBA, I created a new user, so I could play with the machine, rather than initially deal with the hours of data transfer. When I was ready to use Migration Assistant, I realized I had created the new user account with the same name as the one I was migrating, which cannot be done. So, I created a temp user, logged into it, and in Migration Assistant instructed it to replace the existing user account of the same name as the one I was migrating. Perhaps there's a glitch in the process here?
I am hoping that someone here is going to have a 2 sentence explanation and I'm going to slap my forehead and mutter "of course", but right now I'm at a loss. Help is much appreciated! Of course, it will be more gratifying and equally frustrating if people are stumped.

Answer 1

I fixed the problem, but I would really appreciate an explanation of exactly why what I did actually worked. And if someone knows why this problem happened in the first place, that would be great, too! Afterall, I simply used Migration Assistant to move data from one Mac to a new one, something that people do a couple million times per year.
From the Finder window, I selected my Desktop folder and then get-info.
I unlocked the lock at the bottom right.
Selected the row that had my user account, with the settings of read & write permissions.
Then on the gear wheel, I selected "Make my_account (Me) the Owner"
Restarted.
So, it was a permission issue (evidenced by the -8072 error code), but no permisisons changed. Just the ownership, I guess, but in a way that is not visible via Terminal. If someone could explain this, I'd really like to learn about it.
(When I restarted, I got a "Welcome to your Mac" as if it was the first time I started the computer. Very odd.)