Eyes on Europe....

Umnnhhhh.....while keeping your eyes on Europe, be careful.  It's a nuke waiting to go off, and nukes will blind you (in the best-case scenario.)

...the European issue is not a crisis of confidence, as Merkel and Sarkozy, et al., keep telling us. It is structural. And until the structural issues are dealt with, the problems will not be solved.

The first problem facing Europe is the glaring sore thumb: there is simply too much sovereign debt in Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Belgium. That is not news. What has yet to be absorbed by the markets is that the cost of bailouts, present and potential, is likely to be in the €3 trillion range, talking an average of the estimates I have seen (with the Boston Consulting Group suggesting €6 trillion). €3 trillion is not pocket change. Indeed, it is a number that is inconceivable in scope.  --Ticker quoting Mauldin

Three Tn Euro is about four-point-one trillion USD.

Buddy, can you spare 'em a dime?