Japan's "lost decade" of the 1990s gave the world "zombie banks." A zombie bank is, in effect, bankrupt. It's made loans to companies that aren't going to be able to pay them back, and the total value of those bad loans exceeds its equity. Normally, a bank in that position has gone bust. Sometimes, when the government doesn't want to let the bank fail but also doesn't want to pay to bail it out, it simply agrees to pretend that the bank is still sound. A bank in that situation faces unusual incentives. The smart strategy is to just double down on bad bets and hope for the best.

Remember the winter of 2001, when the Taliban halted the U.S.-allied Northern Alliance -- a collection of Afghan military groups -- on the road to Kabul and forced the country into a decade-long military standoff with the Afghan government? Recall 2003, when Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard fought off the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and set the stage for extended battles between the American and Iraqi militaries? Me neither. Because, of course, neither of those things happened. Whatever you think of either war, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military proved capable of dislodging enemy forces from the capital and securing a tidy victory. The problems all came afterward.

With America's debt-ceiling crisis resolved, the time is ripe for a brand-new set of financial calamities on the other side of the Atlantic. The "rescue" plan for Greece put forth by European leaders on July 22 is unraveling with surprising speed. The relatively narrow scope of the solution seems to underscore how little political will there is to resolve the underlying issues with the European economy.

Giulio Tremonti is obviously a man who thinks highly of himself. This weekend, Italy's embattled minister of finance confided to the Corriere de la Sera newspaper that a political attack which resulted in his resignation "could bring down the euro."

The good news is that the Greek government survived a vote of confidence shortly after midnight last Tuesday, keeping the country from defaulting on its debts. But that's also the bad news, because it means the government will proceed with a vote this week on the stringent austerity program demanded by the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The draconian program is a condition of the next installment of the loan payment, money that is dribbling into the Greek republic only as long as it keeps cutting its budget.

Last Friday, Geert Wilders, the far-right leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, made his way to the Greek Embassy in the Hague. He went to deliver a blunt message for the country: Leave the Eurozone. He read a letter to reporters outside the building urging the financially embattled Greeks to abandon the Euro -- for their own sake and the sake of the other countries in the monetary union. He was then photographed holding up a blown-up replica of a 1.000- drachma note, the old Greek currency, just in case anyone had failed to grasp his not-so-subtle exhortation.

President Barack Obama's Democratic base and a majority of Democrats in Congress are poised to revolt if the White House fails to order a sharp drawdown in the number of troops in Afghanistan this month.