So you think congressional Republicans are the only right-wingers who like to append their pet (and sometimes, wedge) issues—like the Keystone pipeline—to must-pass legislation like the payroll tax-cut extension? Guess again—it looks to be a trans-Atlantic syndrome.

European leaders went one better this time. Not content with failing to resolve the debt crisis tearing through the eurozone and threatening a global recession, they have now managed to create a new source of instability: the rift between Britain and the rest of the European Union, whose consequences may prove to be momentous indeed.

Yesterday, both Bob Kuttner, here in the Prospect, and I ,in my Washington Post column, noted that the deal that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy struck to save the Eurozone will inflict years of austerity on European nations that are already mired in depression. Spain, for instance, has an unemployment rate of about 20 percent and a youth unemployment rate that is approaching a mind-boggling 50 percent. It needs a massive Keynesian jolt to its economy, not budgetary constraints that will condemn it to a decade or quarter-century of penury.

The grand bargain between Germany, France, and the European Central Bank (ECB) is being hailed as a diplomatic breakthrough that will save the euro and the European Union (EU).

The essence of the deal is this: EU nations commit to an enforceable austerity program, which is ad hoc for now but will eventually become a formal part of the EU treaty. It will take the shape of tight limits on budget deficits, with penalties. That, in turn, gives the ECB the fig leaf it needs to heavily support purchases of bonds from countries like Italy, whose debt has come under speculative attack. All of this reassures markets, and the cost of borrowing comes down. In turn, bank holdings of sovereign bonds retain their value.

This week, both coasts saw student marches on Monday and big-city police raids on Tuesday. As the chancellors of the University of California met by teleconference, students throughout the U.C. system held demonstrations and teach-ins opposing tuition hikes and police violence. At U.C. Davis, they called a student strike. Meanwhile, their counterparts at the City University of New York marched on their own board of trustees as it voted on five years of tuition hikes.

In the ongoing battle over extending the payroll tax cuts that currently save the median American household about $1,000 a year, one salient point is commonly overlooked: The proposal that the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats are championing also cuts in half the payroll tax for employers. Currently, employers are subjected to a payroll tax of 6.2 percent on every paycheck they write. The Democratic proposal would reduce that to 3.1 percent on the first $5 million in taxable payroll – that is, it would chiefly benefit small and middle-sized businesses.

During the early aughts, the financial sector freely gambled with money implicitly or directly guaranteed by taxpayers, selling securities based on worthless subprime mortgages to their customers. We all know how that turned out. Yet those responsible for the worst recession since the Great Depression have for the most part escaped federal prosecution. Given this context, it is easy to understand why United States District Court Judge Jed Rakoff angrily rejected a proposed deal between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Citigroup over the company's practice of selling toxic mortgage-backed securities to its customers at the same time it bet against them.