The media has focused a lot of its attention on Europe recently—and deservedly so. The meta-stories generally concern weakness in one country or another or the slow disintegration of hope for Greece. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how I thought Europe would end up pulling itself together for political reasons—the fear of history, mostly—but I did not really delve into what would have to happen to make that the case.

In July, I spoke at the Commonwealth Live! networking tour. The conversations I had there, as well as the increasing sense that Europe is continuing to deteriorate, suggested that I should lay out how I see the evolution of the eurozone and how it might succeed or fail. This thought process will obviously adjust to conditions on the ground, and one reason for writing it down is to track the changes as we move forward.

The big story over the weekend and on Monday was the Paul Ryan vice presidential selection. The U.S. presidential race really started with that announcement. Yes, I know that we have had months of Republican primaries and you could argue that the race began when Romney wrapped up the nomination. But until this weekend we did not really know what the race would be about.

Financial markets take one step back, two steps forward

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There were no significant single financial events over the weekend, but there was continued fallout. The Financial Times (FT) led with “Deteriorating outlook drives Spain’s borrowing costs near euro-era highs.” Despite the bailout, bond yields are well above 7 percent—an unsustainable level—and appear likely to stay that way, according to the story on page B16 in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), “Bailing on Spain’s Bailout.” Greece is also back in the news, on page 3 of the FT with “ECB raises pressure on Athens over debt collateral” and on page A8 of the WSJ with “ECB Adds to Pressure on Greece.” The European story is not over yet, and it may erupt back into the headlines in short order.

The U.S. picture in the press is a bit more mixed. The WSJ ran “Unemployment Rises in Six of 10 Battleground States” on page A3 on Saturday and “Price Check: Drought May Hit Grocery Tab” on page B1, but on Monday, page B1 had “As Homes Go, So Do Pickups,” which pointed out a recovery in truck sales and home sales. The weight of the coverage is still negative—note “Bleak jobs outlook raises heat on the Fed” on page 1 of Monday’s FT—but some nuance is creeping into coverage of the U.S. Maybe it is a leading indicator.

I went looking for the actual sausage factory quotation from Otto von Bismarck, but apparently he was not the person who originally said it, and even the misattributed versions don’t say exactly what I want to say. So let’s take a big step down from Otto to the Urban Dictionary for a definition of a sausage factory.

“An unpleasant process, especially one that is hidden from public view, that is used to produce a widely consumed product: lots of people like sausage, but few would enjoy watching leftover animal parts ground up to make it.”

This is the theme of the news today. The ultimate goal, of course, is fiscal stability and economic recovery, but getting there is proving to be tough. Government is getting hit in many ways. From the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), we have “Post Office Might Miss Retirees’ Payment” on page A2 and “House Votes to Require Detailing of Budget Cuts,” while the New York Times (NYT) has “Years of Unraveling, Then Bankruptcy for a City” on the front page, as well as “South Carolina Governor’s Budget Ax is Blunted by Legislature,” “Detroit Mayor Confirms Cuts to Workers’ Pay and Benefits,” and “Maine Debate Hints at Rift on Medicaid After Ruling.” These headlines concern all levels of government—federal, state, and municipal—and both major parties, as well as both spending increases and spending cuts. The one theme is that limitations on available resources are now hitting.

Businesses are facing the same types of constraints. Some are facing them more or less voluntarily, as in “Big Banks Prepare Another Round of Cuts” from C1 in the NYT, and some involuntarily, as in “Four Banks Targeted in Euribor Probe” from page 1 of the Financial Times (FT) and “In Its First Action, Consumer Bureau Takes Aim at Capital One” from page B1 of the WSJ. Some are starting to fight against particular problems—see “Utilities Fear Approach of Fiscal Cliff” from page 5 of the FT, which describes how utilities and other dividend-paying companies are planning to fight the pending increase in dividend taxes from 15 percent to more than 43 percent.

Finally, individuals are facing the same problems, both at high levels, as in “Economic Fears Hurting Obama, Poll Indicates” from the front page of the NYT,and at middle class levels, as in “Uncomfortable Accounting: Retirees Wrestle with a Pension Buyout from GM.”

In the absence of breaking news, the consistent story here is that choices are being made across the board about how to raise more and spend less, and it isn’t pretty. But the factory has to keep rolling, so expect to see a lot more of this going forward.

For both the weekend and this morning, the headlines are uniformly anti-financial. Let’s take a look at the front pages:

Financial Times

We have another day without a single overarching theme in the newspapers. The U.S. papers, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the New York Times (NYT), lead with domestic politics. The WSJ hits on union political spending and on the beginnings of the battle over the extension of the Bush tax cuts. The NYT looks at fundraising by the presidential campaigns—Romney is ahead—and the evolving political incentives on the tax-cut extensions and health care. This is a pretty interesting article, as it highlights the evolution of the incentives we discussed in an earlier post in the context of intra-party politics. The bright line for a cutoff of $250,000 in income for the tax-cut extension, as opposed to $1 million, actually appears to run through the Democratic Party to a greater extent than I would have expected. Likewise, there appears to be some evolving Republican support for parts of the health care bill. These intra-party arguments will only get more complicated, particularly on the health care side, as voters start to process what they will now be losing, either on the expiration of the tax cuts or on a repeal of the health care bill. Don’t expect simple party line votes on either—that may be what we get, but it really is not as simple as that.

The Financial Times (FT) focused on Europe and China again. Key issues include an accelerated plan to aid Spanish banks, which also makes the “What’s News” column in the WSJ and the business section of the NYT. Overall, this is probably a good thing, but it does not seem to have impressed the markets to any degree. The LIBOR fixing scandal is also highlighted in the FT; the problem continues to expand to other banks besides Barclays. and we can expect to be hearing a lot more about this going forward.

I am still digging into the Supreme Court’s decision not to strike down Obamacare, and have not yet fully digested either the economic implications or what we can reasonably expect to happen in the “unintended consequences” category, which I always find the most interesting part of an analysis. While I table discussion of the act itself, though, I think it’s worth mentioning the ways that the implementation will create new political incentives and how that will play out in the political process.

First of all, the fact that the bill is now considered largely constitutional lays the groundwork for implementation. I suspect that many states controlled by Democrats will move as quickly as possible to expand the health insurance rolls while states controlled by Republicans will do the opposite, and for the same reason: once the uninsured get health insurance, they have an enormous incentive to make sure, through political action, that it does not get taken away. If estimates are correct and 30 million people will get insurance, then there are millions of votes which, through self-interest, now have an incentive to vote for the Democrats.