At least this time, the public actually chose new leaders, instead of the European Union choosing them for the public. In Spain, the Popular Party (why didn’t we think of that? How can you lose with a name like the Popular Party?) led by Mariano Rajoy scored a victory over the Socialists, due in no small part to the crisis ravaging the country with high unemployment and a collapsing housing market.
Mr Rajoy, who is expected to tackle the country’s debts amid slow growth and high unemployment, said he was aware of the “magnitude of the task ahead”.
He told supporters there would be “no miracle” to restore Spain to financial health, and that the country must unite to win back respect in Europe.
“Forty-six million Spaniards are going to wage a battle against the crisis,” said the 56-year-old PP leader [...]
Miguel Arias, the Popular Party’s campaign co-ordinator, said Spain was “going to make all the sacrifices”.
“We have been living as a very rich country,” he told BBC News.
“People are used to a very high level of public services and it takes time to them to acknowledge the realisation that we now are a poor country, that we have lots of debts and in order to pay them back we must reduce public expenditure and then we must recover the confidence of the markets.”
A-ha, now I see why the EU didn’t step in. The party out of power favored austerity! And since things are so bad in Spain, with nearly 20% unemployment, the party out of power, just by virtue of not being the party in power, was assured of victory, the EU could just sit back and let nature take its course.

This is the fifth European country to see a change in leadership during the debt crisis, with Spain joining Italy, Greece, Portugal and Ireland. And yet we still have a crisis, not because of anything the old governments did or anything the new governments are doing, necessarily, but because the real leaders in Europe, the ones with the firepower to solve, the problem, refuse to take the necessary steps. Mario Draghi, the new head of the ECB, appears to be following in those footsteps:
Credibility implies that our monetary policy is successful in anchoring inflation expectations over the medium and longer term. This is the major contribution we can make in support of sustainable growth, employment creation and financial stability. And we are making this contribution in full independence.
If the only contribution he thinks they can make is on inflation, then as Paul Krugman writes, the ECB “will end up as the highly credible defender of the value of a currency that no longer exists.” Krugman has more in his column today, highlighting that the leaders of Europe aren’t technocrats, but deluded idealists who think that some weird form of Calvinism and self-denial will reap their own rewards.

The biggest problem for Europe right now is that creditors are fleeing from their governments’ bonds and the banks that hold them, in a kind of slow-motion bank run. If the ECB stands mute, the result will be disastrous.