1. Greece After months of vitriolic negotiations and after calling a referendum in which it successfully campaigned to have Greece vote against accepting a financial bailout from the EU/IMF, the Greek government appears today to have accepted that bailout.
2. Chinese stocks After plunging for a month, Chinese stocks have risen by 10% over the past two trading days. The world is breathing a sigh of relief. I’m not sure what’s weirder–that this happened or that foreigners believed for a short while that in a country where doing anti-social stuff can get you either a long prison term or beheading, rather than the cover of Forbes, China would be unable to achieve this outcome. Actually, the foreign belief is way weirder.
3. Microsoft/Nokia Less than fifteen months after acquiring the cellphones business of Nokia, MSFT has discovered that what it bought for over $7 billion (led by mastermind Steve Ballmer) is essentially worthless and is writing off virtually the entire purchase price. The stock went up on the news.
Which is weirder: that the MSFT board that rubber-stamped this disaster is still intact? …or that people are still buying Clippers season tickets? I suppose you could argue that Nokia was the price for getting rid of Ballmer, which would imply that the behavior of Clippers fans is weirder.