greece acropolis
Busines Insider
We had a nice rally ahead of those crazy Greek elections.
First the scoreboard:

Dow: 12,767, +115.2, +0.9%

S&P 500: 1,342, +13.7, +1.0%

NASDAQ: 2,872, +36.4, +1.2%

And now the top stories:
  • Everyone knows that Greece is in bad shape.  It's so bad that many experts often talk about countries that aren't as bad by saying they're not Greece.  Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal is currently in Greece covering the elections.  After speaking with the locals, he sums up the crisis in two words: rusfeti and haratsi. 

  • The big concern is that the left-leaning, anti-bailout SYRIZA party will rise to power.  Many experts agree that if they get their way, then the Greece risks getting booted from the euro. Some consider Alexis Tsipras, the SYRIZA leader, to be the most feared man in all of Europe.  But according to Weisenthal, the conservative New Democracy party is also highly energized ahead of this weekend's elections. 

  • "If there's going to to be a Lehman moment in the crisis, it's going to be next week," said Niall Ferguson on Bloomberg television.  

  • The U.S. economic picture was made no better by this morning's disappointing New York Fed manufacturing report.  The number tumbled to 2.29 from 17.09 last month.  Economists were looking for 12.5.  The employment index in the northeast fell 8.1 points to 12.4.

  • Industrial production unexpectedly fell 0.1 percent in May.  Economists were looking for an increase of 0.1 percent.  "Within consumer goods, the output of durables fell 1.3 percent in May, with none of the major categories registering an increase," said the Fed.

  • Rounding off the trio of disappointing economic news was the consumer confidence number, which fell to 74.1.  This was worse than the 77.5 that economists were looking for.

  • So the economic picture we got wasn't too rosy.  Even bullish strategist David Bianco withdrew a one-week old bullish stock market call.  Nouriel Roubini, aka Dr. Doom, warned that the "financial and economic clouds" were darkening.  Earlier today, Barry Ritholtz said he had just bought some shares of Wal-mart, which he argued would do well in the event of a recession.  He said Target would also do well.