I haven’t been writing much about Europe recently, and it’s not because there hasn’t been anything happening. There has been. But because most of it has been inside baseball, with little immediate effect (at least here in the U.S.), it hasn’t been as interesting as other developments here.

That largely remains the case, but it’s worth taking a look just to keep in touch with what’s been going on. The big news is that a bailout package for Greece is just about to be finalized. This will be the final bailout, as the Germans are having domestic political trouble getting approval for more cash.

I’ve previously referred to a “confidence disconnect” between consumers and business, and it seems to be continuing. Depending on which stats you look at, sales over the weekend increased between 6 percent and 13 percent over last year, which indicates that consumers are still pulling out their wallets and supporting the economy. But from a business standpoint, although the numbers are quite good at the surface, they may not be as good as they seem.

Several factors make the strong top-line numbers less positive from a business standpoint. The first, and potentially most significant, has to do with whether the sales are profitable. Given the wide range of deals and discounts employed to get buyers to make a purchase, profitability took a hit last year—and it may this year as well. The second is whether strong sales over the kick-off weekend will augur similarly strong results over the entire holiday season, or whether retailers have merely succeeded in bringing sales forward rather than increasing them overall. Evidence from past years runs both ways, and the effect on Black Friday itself was negative, as earlier store openings on Thanksgiving seem merely to have led people to start shopping sooner rather than to buy more goods. The National Retail Federation projects overall sales will increase 4.1 percent this year, which is relatively strong, but it’s less than last year’s 5.6-percent increase.

Today is a slow day news-wise. I expect everyone is doing pretty much what I am: recovering from an overdose of good food and wine.

Once upon a time, a turkey hatched in the dead of winter. He lived in a nice warm coop, had plentiful corn and seeds to eat, and spent much of his poult-hood playing with all of the other little turkeys. When spring came, he and his friends ventured out into the yard and played some more; they continued to have corn and seeds to eat and shelter from the rain. The summer brought more of the same, along with nice people who regularly cleaned the coop, refilled corn and seed stores after the turkeys gobbled it all up, and chased away scary critters like foxes and cats when they got too near.

That’s the only conclusion I can draw from today’s headlines.

First, let’s look at the New York Times (NYT). “Insider Inquiry Inching Closer to a Billionaire” discusses the implication of Steve Cohen, one of the rock stars of the hedge fund and investing world, in insider trading. “Hewlett’s Loss: A Folly Unfolds, By the Numbers” is about Hewlett-Packard’s write-off of nearly $9 billion of the $11 billion purchase price of a company that was, apparently, an accounting fraud.

Yesterday, the stock market cheered the good news on the fiscal cliff negotiations—that everyone was being polite to one another for a change. The market melted back up to the level of, well, last week. Even with yesterday’s bump, though, we are still down about 3.5 percent in the past month, which suggests that investor optimism may be premature. Let’s think for a minute about what the fiscal cliff means, and what “solving the problem” might mean, to see whether this degree of optimism is warranted.

First of all, the fiscal cliff consists of two major components: tax increases and spending cuts. Within those two divisions, there are smaller items. On the subject of tax increases, for example, the impending expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts is getting all the press.

I am not a tax expert, and I don’t even play one on TV. In fact, I’m normally reluctant to weigh in on taxes, but there is one issue that doesn’t seem to be getting the attention I think it deserves: the expansion of the alternative minimum tax, better known as the AMT.

Briefly, if you are above a certain income threshold, you have to calculate your tax bill both the normal way and under the AMT rules, which limit certain deductions and typically result in a bigger tax hit. You then pay the higher of the two. This can be a nasty shock if you’re not expecting it, as the additional liability can run into the thousands.

Today, President Obama and Speaker Boehner, along with their teams, will sit down at the White House to try and figure out how to solve this thing. Encouragingly, everyone seems to be shutting up.

Hurricane Sandy was one of the largest storms ever to strike the United States, and, because of its path up the East Coast and into the country, it hit areas that are rarely affected by hurricanes. As a result of both of these factors, combined with the timing of the landfall and the tide, the damage was extensive and serious.