Double-dip usually means a diet-busting serving of ice cream. If ice cream is easy money, and the diet is the judicious use of credit, then it's another way to explain Europe's economic crisis. To paraphrase the old saying, "What if they gave a V-shaped recovery and nobody came," might be what's happening to the economy. When no one's certain what's ahead, they focus on what they know. In the case of businesses, that usually means efficiency gets more attention than expansion. That mindset does not lead to an economic boom, but rather, more of the same unsatisfying muddling that frustrates managers and makes opportunities hard to find except for the most insightful among us.

Last week was a tough one for stock markets worldwide. Europe's current and future problems with the budget and credit issues of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) weighed on markets and sent funds from around the world to the U.S. dollar and away from the Euro. This is strange: for years, the Euro was the better managed currency, but it's now in disarray. The flight to the dollar is due to the size of U.S. markets, ease of converting dollars, and the sense that the problems here on these shores are further toward resolution than those of other economies.

Yes, there is some redeeming virtue in being less worse. The money supply is still huge, dominated by mortgage securities being held by the Fed that need to be unwound. Just this past week, there was word that the Fed wants to unwind, but doesn't think it will do so now. The events of this past week may make them hold off even longer.