I slipped out of town Friday after work. I rode up to Pismo Beach for a friend’s bachelor party. A small group of us rented a condo and enjoyed a weekend of quiet camaraderie. A few interesting things have transpired since then:

1. Seven more banks failed. Illinois was the place to be if you worked for the FDIC.

2. Nothing happened to resolve the Greek crisis. That didn’t stop it from making headlines. Bond traders are starting to suspect that even if the whole aid package gets approved, Greece might not recover in the one year it would take before it ran out of funds and needed another bailout. Greek debt is now considered to be more risky than Pakistani debt. There were assurances this weekend that the crisis would not spread to Portugal. In other words, the crisis will certainly spread to Portugal.

3. Ukraine wants in on some IMF bailout action. $2 billion from the IMF and $0.5 billion from the world bank will satisfy them for next year. On the plus side, they are considerably less risky than Greece.

4. Goldman got into more trouble from emails. Goldman PR has definitely suffered lately. I am curious how Lloyd “God’s Work” Blankfein will recover from this. Yeah, he’s the master of PR.

5. The US may start to unload their Citi stake. Who is buying Citi at this price?

6. A federal appeals court allowed Wal-Mart’s class action gender discrimination suit to go to trial. Let’s see how Wal-Mart’s high volume, low price business model adapts to litigation. They might find problems with their ability to dictate prices in this particular area.

Good times.