Europe is a tangled mess of politics and bureaucracy that puts anything else to shame.  Why do I say this?  First, because it's true.  Second, and more importantly, I need to preemptively cover myself in case any of the following isn't accurate.  No one can afford to "misremember" vital details, you know.

Definitions:

Europe: it's a continent

European Union or EU: 28 states, not all of whom use the European currency, but who still are unified politically and economically in strange and complicated ways

European Commission: the government of the EU (28 states)

Economic and Financial Affairs Council or Ecofin:  Full 28 state meeting of finance ministers to basically police each others financial and economic affairs (oddly enough!).

Eurozone : the 19 states that use the Euro solely (or who claim to use the Euro solely, but still have a black market for pre-Euro currency).

Eurogroup: the 19 state version of the 28 state Ecofin thing mentioned above.  Really, it's just a cool kids club within the Ecofin that gets to vote on stuff that only affects the 19 state Eurozone. 

There's so much more, but that's enough for today, and enough to set the stage for the next 2 days.  The standard procedure for the Eurogroup (cool kids) is to get together a day before the Ecofin.  The latter is part of the broader EU Summit.  The former is also referred to as the "Euro Summit," which is different than the EU Summit. 

None of that matters.  I just wanted to complain about how confusing it is and point out the fact that there is "sensational headline potential" for the next 48 hours in Europe as a ton of politicians and finance ministers meet and police each others' countries. 

Greece gets most of the policing right now, and the task at hand is to determine whether or not there's any way it will remain in the Eurozone.  Just how naughty is Greece?  Here's how it looks when their 10yr yields are set to the same y-axis as Germany.

As you can see, there's a whole lot less going on now as far as markets are concerned compared to 2011-2012.  That implies that investors either see Europe allowing Greece to extend and pretend on its bailout program or that Greece will otherwise at least stand some chance to repay its debt in the event of a Eurozone exit.  We might get a few more clues about these options today and tomorrow. 

As far as domestic bond markets are concerned, the recent trend is toward higher rates despite the long term trend toward lower rates.  All we can do for now is play defense and keep an eye on the following important lines in the sand.  Additionally, there's some hope to be held out as we're just now edging up to the first major technical opportunity for a bounce.  Please understand, that massive, ongoing sell-offs can have the same look about them at first, so I'm not saying "here comes the bounce"--simply that this is the first solid/obvious opportunity for dip buyers to get back into Treasuries around these 2% 10yr yields.