“The world is too much with us,” lamented William Wordsworth over 200 years ago. Lately, American investors, businessmen, policymakers, and workers agree inclined to agree. At least in the case of Europe. Just as our recovery from a deep recession seemed to be gaining momentum, strong headwinds blow over from Europe. France seems ready to elect a president who promises to impose a marginal tax rate of 75 percent, which most observers agree would reduce prospects for a quick recovery. The German economy, once the growth engine that could pull the eurozone out of recession, is slowing. The Dutch, until now Germany’s biggest ally in the effort to impose austerity on wayward peripheral countries, have decided that austerity is for thee but not for me; the government fell in a dispute over spending cuts, prompting the Fitch rating agency to consider lowering the Netherlands’ triple-A rating.

The eurozone’s bailed out periphery countries can’t persuade their saviors of the validity of the first rule of holes—when in one, stop digging. So although austerity is driving deficits up rather than down, shrinking economies (at an annual rate of 5 percent in Greece), and boosting unemployment (half of Spain’s young workers are jobless), Germany insists that everyone dig faster.