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That may foreshadow a gloomy holiday season in markets, especially if wary investors opt to reduce risk in their portfolios and take refuge in U.S. Treasuries and the dollar.

Just weeks after it seemed leaders had drafted a master plan to solve the crisis, doubts rose about whether Greece would back a 130 billion-euro bailout.

And as politicians in Athens struggled to form a consensus government, Italian bond yields spiked to a euro-era high of 6.4 percent, raising fears that the country may soon need to follow Greece and others in seeking an emergency bailout.

"At the end of the day, it does seem like a grand plan is elusive at best," said David Ader, head of government bond strategy at CRT Capital Group in Stamford, Connecticut.

"We've seen one European bank and one U.S. brokerage fail. We know there are strains for French banks. We're wondering how long it will be before Greek default worries spread to Italy and Spain," he said. "In a situation like that, money managers are going to decide to simply take their risk down."

Investors are betting the market will see evidence of that as soon as this week, as flight-to-safety flows help boost U.S. Treasury debt, lift the dollar against the euro and weigh on stock markets around the world.

The biggest fear is that a disorderly default in Greece or elsewhere would ripple across the global financial market the same way the Lehman Brothers collapse did in 2008. That, investors fear, would probably be enough to plunge the global economy into recession.

"This is going to be pretty negative news for risk markets," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago. "We are going to see a continued flight-to-quality tomorrow."

Benchmark U.S. 10-year note yields dropped more than 29 basis points in the past week and a half as worries about Europe overshadowed signs of economic improvement in America.

FADING RISK RALLIES

Ashraf Laidi, CEO of Intermarket Strategy in London, said he expected the euro to struggle again this week after losing nearly 3 percent against the dollar last week. By year end, he said it could fall below $1.30. It was around $1.38 Friday.

"This past week really raised some tricky questions," he said. "For the first time I can remember, the possibility that Greece really could leave the euro zone was being talked about in cafes and bars as well as on trading desks."

If Greece can cobble together a new unity government that backs the EU rescue plan, that might, "at least for a while, be a market-stabilizing factor," said Citigroup currency strategist Greg Anderson.

Prime Minister George Papandreou suggested Sunday he was ready to pass the baton.

But that is not likely to cheer investors much, meaning any rally in stocks or the euro will be shallow and brief.

"These 24-hour risk-on rallies, I don't know how much longer people are going to be willing to do that," said Ader. "Sell-offs are getting deeper because the rallies are only short-covering moves. People are not getting long and putting on bets that everything is suddenly OK."

FROM GREECE TO ITALY

Alan Ruskin, head of G10 currency strategy at Deutsche Bank in New York, said the focus is likely to shift from Greece to Italy fairly quickly in the weeks ahead, and that should mean more market volatility and unwillingness to take on risk.

Italy's debt-to-output ratio stands at 120 percent, second only to Greece in the 17-country euro zone, and its borrowing costs are rising.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi recently refused a loan offer by the International Monetary Fund and his government may be on the verge of collapse.

"Berlusconi says Italians are not feeling the crisis but that's because the European Central Bank has been providing high levels of liquidity at low interest rates and buying Italian bonds," Ruskin said. "That begs the question, should the ECB stop that to show them this is really a crisis?"

"I have to believe a lot of investors like me are thinking this could be the start of Italy week," said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis. "Italy is going to rapidly rise on investor radar screens and may be the bigger story."

(Additional reporting by Richard Leong, Daniel Bases, Karen Brettell and Julie Haviv in New York; editing by Bernard Orr)

Portugal, Ireland, Finland and Greece could all pull out of the euro zone rather than operate under a single treasury, Jim O'Neill, whose division manages more than $800 billion (500 billion pounds) of assets, was cited as saying.

He also called on the European Central Bank (ECB) to show more leadership to reassure "worried investors."

"The Germans want more fiscal unity and much tougher central observation -- with the idea of a finance ministry," O'Neill said.

"With that caveat, it is tough to see all countries that joined wanting to live with that - including the one that is so troubled here (Greece)."

He added that only countries such as Germany, France and Benelux, were suited for a monetary union because their exchange rates were closely linked. But for others, it was questionable.

O'Neill said countries such as Finland and Ireland that are neighbors of non-euro zone countries -- the UK and Sweden -- might prefer to quit the euro, which would bolster the strength of the single currency.

He added that the Brussels bailout deal will not solve the crisis and that the ECB needed to buy bonds.

Since the ECB resumed its bond buying programme (SMP) around three months ago it has purchased some 100 billion euros of government bonds, a majority of which are thought to be Italian BTPs.

Italy is seen as the next domino that could fall in the euro zone crisis, with yields on its 10-year bonds reaching 6.38 percent, close to the 7 percent threshold widely viewed as unsustainable.

A member of the ECB was reported on Saturday as saying it frequently debated the option of ending its purchases of Italian bonds unless Rome delivers on reforms.

O'Neill told BBC radio on Sunday that it will be "really interesting" to see how the markets react to the ECB's comments when they reopen on Monday.

He said the comments gave the impression the ECB was not an eager participant in trying to support the Italian bond market and bringing about stability.

"It would appear clear in that regard that they might also prefer a more of a unity type government to try and come up with a new economic policy for Italy," he said.

"But it is all very fragile and the markets are requiring a stronger leadership from within these countries as well as from the ECB."

(Reporting by Avril Ormsby and Lorraine Turner, Editing by Maureen Bavdek)

China's biggest offshore oil producer CNOOC Ltd (0883.HK) said on Sunday its 50 percent-owned unit Bridas Energy Holdings has terminated a deal to buy BP's stake in Argentina-based oil and gas group Pan American Energy LLC BPPAE.UL (PAE).

BP hinted at its third-quarter results last month that it would announce an increase in its dividend in early 2012.

However, the failure of the sale of its 60 percent interest in PAE could mean cashflow is lower than might have been expected, making it harder to raise the dividend.

At the results, BP said the deal, initially signed last November, was not as important to the firm's cashflow today as it was a year ago.

"We reached that agreement last year at a time when oil prices were lower. It was a time when we actually needed to make some divestments of properties. We're past that point. We don't actually need to make that divestment....if it doesn't happen, it's absolutely fine," Chief Executive Bob Dudley told analysts at the time.

BP said in a statement on Sunday it will repay a deposit of $3.5 billion received for the PAE stake at the end of 2010, which would not impact its level of gearing.

BP's planned sale of the stake was intended to help raise funds to pay for the cleanup of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010.

BP had been waiting on regulatory approval for the deal to proceed.

"The transaction was subject to conditions precedent - namely, Argentine anti-trust and Chinese governmental approvals," said a spokesman at BP.

"Securing these approvals was the sole responsibility of Bridas. Bridas had not yet been able to satisfy these conditions precedent but the approval processes were ongoing and, for reasons known only to them, Bridas has now chosen to terminate the transaction," he added.

BP previously said delays in regulatory approval were understandable given the ongoing election campaign in Argentina.

In a filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange, CNOOC said Bridas Energy sent BP a letter on November 5 to terminate the deal.

It gave no further details.

Late last month, CNOOC said Bridas Corp had not obtained the necessary regulatory approvals to complete the $7 billion bid. It had said Nov 1. was the deadline after which either party would have the right to terminate the agreement.

Bridas already owns a 40 percent stake in the group, which BP has described as Argentina's second-largest producer of oil and gas.

CNOOC may have developed cold feet over the agreement because of the arbitrary and heavy handed nature of Argentina's government that has seen Western oil and gas companies exit the country, according to a report from Jefferies Group at the end of October.

BP said it will now consider all its strategic options regarding PAE.

(Reporting by Charlie Zhu in Hong Kong, Tom Bergin and Lorraine Turner in London; Editing by Erica Billingham; Editing by Ed Lane)

Sentiment will probably receive a boost after Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou won a parliamentary confidence vote early Saturday.

The vote helped the cash-strapped country avoid snap elections that would have destroyed its bailout deal and turned up the flames on the euro zone's economic crisis, though risks to the global financial system remain.

Greece is still in turmoil. Papandreou signaled he would still stand down, calling for a new coalition to ram the bailout deal through parliament and keep the nation from going bankrupt.

Other challenges haven't gone away, such as keeping countries like Italy from going the way of Greece. So, while investors may cheer the Greece vote, two years of crisis have taught them to be vigilant of new risks emerging from Europe's debt debacle.

"It takes away the risk of a referendum or renegotiating new terms. Net-net it's a 'risk-on' event," Thomas Roth, executive director of U.S. government bond trading at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities USA, in New York, said about the Greece vote.

"How much you can rally on this? It may be temporary at best. You have still have a lot of risks like Italy. We just don't know ... All in all, it's a slight positive for stocks and a slight negative for bonds."

Though investors are cautious, stocks may be able to keep in place the recent upward trend as more evidence suggests the U.S. economy is progressing despite Europe's woes.

Friday's U.S. monthly jobs report suggested some improvement in October, even though the headline payroll numbers appeared weaker than expected.

"What I'm seeing at the moment is that investors are getting more reassured with the picture that the U.S. may actually do OK despite the troubles in Europe," said Natalie Trunow, chief investment officer of equities at Calvert Investment Management in Bethesda, Maryland, which manages about $13 billion.

"The more recent datapoints on the U.S. economy and earnings profiles are supporting that assertion," she said.

Stocks ended with losses for the week.

But on Monday, the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index .SPX posted an 11 percent gain for October, its best monthly percentage rise since December 1991.

With results in from some 433 of the S&P 500 companies, 70 percent have beaten forecasts on third-quarter earnings, defying views that growth would be hit by the problems in Europe and a slower economy in China.

Analysts have said earnings growth has helped to support the market and has taken some of the focus away from Europe, even if just momentarily.

More reports are expected next week, including several retailers like Macy's (M.N), whose results could shed some light on how the holiday shopping season may go.

"If there isn't a lot of resolution on the European front, some of the big company earnings could be market movers. There are a lot of positives about the U.S. economy, and strong earnings are one of them," said Rob Morgan, chief investment strategist at Fulcrum Securities in Philadelphia.

EUROPE STILL CAUSE FOR VOLATILITY

Still, strategists see plenty of volatility ahead, making any big moves hard for short-term investors.

The CBOE Volatility Index .VIX fell 1.1 percent to close at 30.16 on Friday, but is well above levels from just last summer. It was trading near 20 in early August.

On the week, the VIX rose 22.9 percent following wide market swings in four of five trading sessions.

"It's all Europe all the time unless we hear otherwise. The underlying tone and theme in the market will be set in Europe until or unless there's some finality to the debt crisis," said Steve Sosnick, equity risk manager at Timber Hill/Interactive Brokers Group in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Similarly, options strategist Frederic Ruffy of WhatsTrading.com, a website headquartered in New York, said: "Investors wait to see whether Greece will implement tough and unpopular austerity measures to avoid a messy debt default."

By taking a longer-term approach, though, some investors have been able to see the current situation as a buying opportunity, analysts said.

Stock valuations are cheap, so if earnings hold up, investors are likely to be better positioned in stocks than in bonds or cash, they said.

The S&P 500 forward price-to-earnings ratio is now at 12, its lowest in years.

"Savvy investors are using the dips to put some money to work, but this is a very difficult market if you're a short-term trader," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at The Davidson Cos. in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Besides earnings, U.S. economic news has helped keep worries about another recession at bay.

Non-farm payrolls rose a tepid 80,000 in October, below economists' expectations. But employers added 102,000 more jobs than previously estimated in August and September.

And the U.S. unemployment rate slipped to 9 percent. It had been stuck at 9.1 percent for three straight months.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Additional reporting by Ryan Vlastelica, Doris Frankel and Edward Krudy; Editing by Jan Paschal and Burton Frierson)

(This story corrects previous story to cut final paragraph with reference to PPI and CPI, which are due week of Nov. 14th)

Whittling down the euro area's mountain of debt was always going to be a long slog, even without the unpredictable political dramas in Greece and Italy that overshadowed last week's summit of the Group of 20 major economies in Cannes on the French Riviera.

But the inability of euro zone leaders to convince their G20 counterparts that they were getting a grip on events has made the task that much harder. Confidence, already fragile, has frayed further.

"It's no wonder that people aren't spending when all you hear every day is about 'the crisis'," said Michel Quintao, co-owner of a wrought-iron workshop in this corner of southeast France, some 200 km (125 miles) from Cannes.

Even before the G20 meeting and an inconclusive pair of euro zone debt-crisis summits last month, the corrosive effect of flagging confidence was taking a toll on growth.

The euro zone's composite purchasing managers' index, a timely gauge of business sentiment, fell sharply in October to 46.5 from 49.1 in September, while German manufacturing orders slumped 4.3 percent in September.

Jim O'Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, said the figures suggested the 17-member euro zone was already in, or close to, recession - explaining why the European Central Bank cut interest rates last Thursday, to the surprise of many investors.

O'Neill said the spread of economic weakness from the periphery to the core of the euro zone was in large part due to contagion via the financial markets, especially the relentless pressure on Italian bonds.

"They desperately need somehow to stabilize Italian financial markets," O'Neill said.

MEANINGFUL RISKS

Undermined by market mistrust of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government, Italy's 10-year bonds yields soared to a euro era high of 6.4 percent last week.

That is close to levels that made the debt-service burdens of Greece, Ireland and Portugal unsustainably onerous and triggered bailouts by the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund. But Italy, with 1.9 trillion euros in public debt, is simply too large to bail out.

O'Neill said it boiled down to vanishing confidence. After all, until July, Italy was relatively untouched by the maelstrom despite weak growth that has averaged just 0.6 percent a year since the euro was created in 1999. Even now, its cyclically adjusted budget position is one of the strongest of any major economy.

"It's a crisis of confidence: Italy needs leadership and supply side reforms to boost growth," O'Neill said.

As Europe bumbles, the rest of the world is watching anxiously, fearful of the fallout.

The United States is perhaps only half-way through its own debt workout. Recovery from the 2008/2009 recession is the weakest on record and, even though economists have marked up their forecasts for fourth-quarter growth, a slump in Europe could revive fears of a relapse.

"The risks associated with the euro area's slide into recession are meaningful," economists at J.P. Morgan wrote in their weekly Global Data Watch publication.

Asia is currently the region with the strongest economy, but it too would not escape unscathed if Europe took a big hit.

Indeed, Rob Subbaraman, Nomura's chief Asian economist based in Hong Kong, said sentiment was already being tested. Companies and the man in the street were anxious.

"Growth is cooling but it's not collapsing," Subbaraman said. Still, he said it was fanciful to imagine that Asia could decouple from its major Western markets. "Asia is very much integrated into the global economy, and if things deteriorate, we'll get hit hard again," Subbaraman said.

CONFIDENCE TRICK

It was telling that Australia, whose reliance on commodity exports makes it a good barometer of global demand, saw fit to cut interest rates last week for the first time since April 2009. The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), the central bank, said a 'mildly restrictive' policy was no longer appropriate.

"The RBA has a very good track record on monetary policy, yet they felt compelled to take their foot off the brake," Subbaraman said.

China, which sends 20 percent of its exports to the European Union, has tirelessly pressed for a resolution to the euro zone's problems, although President Hu Jintao, like other G20 leaders, conspicuously declined in Cannes to contribute to the bloc's rescue fund.

Ting Lu, a Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist based in Hong Kong, is forecasting robust 8.7 percent year-on-year growth for China this quarter and 8.6 percent in 2012. But he said a sharp slowdown could not be ruled out in the event of an economic slump in Europe or a break-up of the euro.

"Our central case is a soft landing. We do have a scenario for a hard landing, but it's not because of domestic Chinese issues," Lu said.

In short, the world economy is increasingly hostage to the fast-changing politics of the euro zone. For want of leadership, uncertainty and fear are sapping the spirits of entrepreneurs, investors and consumers.

"Let me be clear," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in Cannes. "Moving the European plan forward remains critical to restoring confidence and growth in the global economy."

(Editing by Erica Billingham)