wall street closed sharply on monday after markets in europe dropped 2% for a range of reasons. europe has been moving to new lows and meanwhile, greek debt yields obviously a key measure of confidence in the greek economy and its ability to conquer crisis. those hit highs. standard & poors issued a warning on italy's credit rating. spanish voters gave their government a drubbing in rejecting mat drid government's handling of the country's economic problems and then just what european business needed least, the threat, just the threat, of that icelandic volcano throwing continental air travel into chaos. anyway, we're about an hour into stock trading here in europe this tuesday. we're seeing a bit of a buyback across the major markets after the plummet we saw in monday's trading. worth pointing out italy's benchmark index, the ftse mib fell 3.3% on monday.