Finance ministers in the European Union agreed Tuesday to new reforms designed to improve market confidence, penalize governments that do not follow budget rules, and increase budget discipline. A key aspect of these proposed rules is that any sanctions against E.U. members will be more automatic and less open to any political intervention.

However, Jean Claude Trichet, the head of the European Central Bank, does not believe these reforms go far enough to address the existing problems, stating that the reforms were "insufficient to draw the lessons from the crisis we had to cope with."

Google (GOOG) found itself in the news spotlight Tuesday morning. First, the company announced that it is going to make a substantial offer to purchase coupon site Groupon. The other news is that the company now faces a formal investigation from European Union antitrust regulators following complaints from several search providers that Google has abused its "dominant position."

The EU stated, "The Commission will investigate whether Google has abused a dominant market position in online search by allegedly lowering the ranking of unpaid search results of competing services." Back in February, Google reported that a British site (Foundem) and a French legal search engine (ejustice.fr) both accused the company of demoting their sites in Web search results through its search algorithm. The two sites state that this took place because they are rivals.

• "This is not a rescue plan. It is the longest ransom note in history: Do what we tell you and you may, in time, get your country back," said Fintan O'Toole, a commentator and author who led a weekend protest by labor-union activists in central Dublin against the imminent bailout. He called the average interest rate being demanded "viciously extortionate."

So the European Union's 27-nation bloc is setting new rules for short selling and derivatives trading. The European Commission set up the European Securities and Market Authority to police European markets.

Michel Barnier, European Union commissioner in charge of reform said: "Today we are proposing rules -- so we know who is doing what and who owes what to who."

European Union leaders have agreed to set up an emergency fund to stop the spread of the Greek crisis and shore up the euro. The amount of the fund was not disclosed, but leaders say it will be in place before Asia starts trading.

The catalyst for setting up the fund was the collapsing euro, which fell 4.3% last week. In addition, spreads on Greek, Spanish and Portuguese bonds widened last week, further indicating a lack of confidence in the EU. European banks have suffered big losses, especially those with exposure to Greece, Portugal and Spain.

If you believe the economic recovery is just beginning, then the sell-off this week was a welcome opportunity. If you bought any stocks two weeks ago, you were hurting, but if you were looking to buy, opportunity was at the front door. Will the rally that started last July when the DJIA traded at 8058 continue? Or is this the apex, having touched 11,309 (up 40% in less than a year), and the only direction is down? I don't think so. Here's why.

The U.S. economy is recovering. All the data from manufacturing to housing sales, even employment (224,000 non-farm workers were added in April, 290,000 total workers found new jobs), show improvement.

Car sales were up 25% for most automakers in the month of April compared to last year's April. Factory orders rose 1.3% in March, helped by higher demand for machinery, appliances, and primary metals. Analysts thought the number would be negative .1%. Pending home sales rose a seasonally-adjusted 5.3% in March. Again, analysts thought the number would be 4%. Pending home sales for the year to date are now up 21.1% from a year ago.

Financial guru, Nouriel Roubini foresees rising sovereign debt leading to defaults.

Roubini predicted the U.S. financial collapse at least a year before it happened. Now he is predicting sovereign defaults for European Union (EU) nations.

When the financial meltdown struck in the United States in 2008, the contagion quickly spread throughout the world, including the European Union (EU). However, unlike the Federal Reserve, which has unilateral authority to act on behalf of the United States, the EU has no such authority.

The EU barely survived 2008 and 2009. Then this year, Greece had difficulty refinancing its sovereign debt. Again, unlike the United States, where the debt came from financial institutions, in Greece the debt is government debt.

Thursday's events in Europe provided some encouragement, if not universal calm, regarding the Greek debt saga, including the promise that Europe and the International Monetary Fund will now move relatively swiftly to put together a suitable package that will assist the Mediterranean nation's transition to fiscal solvency.

But even if Europe again show signs of "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory," investors should not anticipate a sudden return to the barter system, globally.