Thing One: Crisis Deferred: Well, we were wrong: Greece did not actually ruin your weekend. They'll just continue to ruin your next several weekdays, as usual.
Somehow the Greek people pulled together over the weekend to keep the global economy from toppling, on fire, over a cliff into an abyss filled with poisonous snakes. Hooray! They did this by handing political power to the conservative New Democracy party and the socialist Pasok party, which will now have to work together to convince Germans not to be so austere and unyielding. So that should go great.
For some reason global financial markets are not convinced this is really the end of anything, and they're slowly starting to freak out again this morning, as it dawns on everybody that we have merely averted a short-term catastrophe, but not really solved any long-term problems. Spanish bonds are still yielding about 7 percent, an unsustainable level that means the country might soon need another bailout.
World leaders meeting in Mexico this week for the G-20 summit will once again try to convince Europeans to more broadly get their act together. Unfortunately, Germany and the rest of the eurozone still seem far apart on long-term fixes, which is a problem because Germany has all the money. But they don't have much time: After years of rolling crisis, each new short-term solution seems to have less of an impact on financial markets.
Thing Two: Policy Paralysis Puts Us In A Pickle: Apparently world leaders not being able to agree on a lunch order, much less long-term solutions to the problems of governance, is not so good for global growth. The Financial Times says its measure of global economic growth has ground to a halt because of "policy paralysis."
Thing Three: Another Bank Bailout: Every time bankers complain about regulation -- cough, Jamie Dimon, cough -- all you have to do is remind them of the alphabet soup of government programs that have lined their pockets ever since the financial crisis. Add to that soup the letters HARP, as in the government's mortgage-refinancing plan, which the Wall Street Journal reports this morning is turning out to be a massive financial boon to big banks, while to the homeowners it was meant to help? Eh -- not so much! Loyal readers of the Huffington Post will recall that Zach Carter warned you last year that this was going to happen.
Thing Four: Morgan Stanley's Fine Mess: In the wake of the disastrous Facebook IPO, most of the blame has for some reason fallen on Nasdaq, which did indeed botch the stock's first day of trading. But Morgan Stanley, the IPO's lead underwriter, was responsible for pricing and hyping the stock, which has contributed to the many, many ugly days that have followed the ugly first day, the Wall Street Journal points out: "Although Facebook shares rose 10% late last week, they are still down 21% from the offering price, the steepest-ever decline over the first month for an IPO of $1 billion or more of a U.S.-based company, according to Dealogic, leaving many investors sitting on big losses and regulators asking for explanations."
Thing Five: It's Quiet. Too Quiet: The Facebook debacle has added to Main Street's distrust of Wall Street. Also not helping? Inexplicable face-ripping moves up and down in financial markets, which may be partly due to the fact that almost nobody is trading any more, as the Wall Street Journal's Matt Phillips points out. That amplifies the effect of what might ordinarily be small market moves.
Thing Six: Washington's Warning: So the Supreme Court, which is in no way a fetid cesspool of political hackery, might soon toss out President Obama's health-care reform law. The Washington Post points out that such a thing has happened before, in Washington state and other places, with fairly dismal consequences: "Washington is among a handful of states that have pursued universal access to health insurance. The challenges they have faced could give some clues about the federal overhaul’s fate should the individual mandate get struck down."
Thing Seven: Microsoft Can Make A Tablet, Too, You Guys: Microsoft, which has a long history of making shoddy knockoffs of superior Apple products, is now going to apply this skill to the tablet, Bloomberg reports. The company plans to introduce a rival to the iPad at an event in Los Angeles today. Good luck with that! "Microsoft needs to assemble a compelling lineup of applications at an attractive price, which may be tough given the least expensive current iPad sells for $499. That’s been impossible for challengers such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and Research In Motion Ltd. that have tried to compete with Apple in the tablet market, estimated to reach $78.7 billion this year."
Thing Seven And One Half: On this day in 1928, Amelia Earhart was part of a flight crew that completed a trip from Newfoundland to Wales, making her the first woman to cross the Atlantic by plane. And on this day in 1983 Sally Ride became the first woman in space, part of a five-person crew on the shuttle Challenger.
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Calendar Du Jour:
Economic Data:
10:00 a.m. ET: NAHB Housing Market Index for June
Corporate Earnings:
Nothing much.
Heard On The Tweets:
@LorcanRK: So, seems nobody wants to govern Greece. Don't blame them, really.
@bradplumer: Congrats to all the Greek parties that lost the election and don't have to deal with this shit.
@ReformedBroker: Investors really need closure from this weekend's Greek election so they can focus back on on the coming US recession and Chinese crash.
@pdacosta: There is a good chance the Greek election will be as memorable as Y2K.
@umairh: Many of you are focused on the Greek elections. But the real question remains: who will build a financial system that works--and when?
-- Calendar and tweets rounded up by Khadeeja Safdar.
And you can follow us on Twitter, too: @markgongloff and @byKhadeeja