Interesting day in Europe

Well after weeks of pessimism and phoney reporting in the international media, yesterday was a positive day for European politics.

The Greeks came up with a fascinating solution to the insoluble - vote for a party that will keep them in the Euro (well would a 300-500% devaluation with the Drachma rather than the Euro really help?), while making the anti-austerity radical Left party under Alexis Tsipras (who does not want Greece out of the Euro either) more powerful in opposition that it was 6 weeks ago.

It will give Tsipras time to make his party's policy planks more workable the next time round. It may be to his advantage that there may be no more elections till some others have occurred elsewhere in Europe and the atmosphere on resolving the crisis will place more emphasis upon getting economies to grow and getting unemployment down from the current disgustingly high levels than letting banks and speculators drive the rest of us into recession.

And despite some comments that I have heard from know-nothing American conservatives about all the Socialist governments in Europe (to which my response was "name me one" - up to yesterday every country in the western part of Europe had conservative, austerity-oriented governments!), the French gave the Parti Socialiste an outright majority in the French parliament. Hardly that radical a party (no bank nationalisation as suggested by the Radical Left in Greece for example), they may resemble Schröder's SPD in Germany that promised more than it delivered between 1998 and 2005 (but at least it kept Germany on the right side of history where the Iraq War is concerned).

The voices across Europe though are clear. We have had enough of austerity, we have had enough of the high unemployment. If we can find a way to get banks to behave sensibly and considerably reduce the powers of speculators to impoverish us all, things might to start to improve.  Even when the Americans elect Romney as President and consequently find them quickly heading into recession the way that the UK (with a carbon copy of Romney's economic policies) is doing.