At any given time, there tends to be one number I check on waking up to see how close we are to the apocalypse. Often it has been the US 10-year -- where down is bad, because it shows pessimism about the economy. Right now it's the Spanish 10-year, where up is bad, because it shows pessimism about the future of the euro.

And guess what: after an election that supposedly was a victory for the forces of orthodoxy, the yield has spiked. 7.25 percent!

The reasons aren't hard to see: we have a maybe coalition that received a minority of the votes, pursuing a strategy almost guaranteed to fail, with parties ranging from radical to full-on fascist waiting in the wings. But what was the market expecting?

In a way, the worst thing about the Greek election is the possibility that it will encourage the Germans and the ECB to persist a bit longer with their fantasies about how things might work.