Wednesday saw a third consecutive day of double digit gains, with the index falling as much as 20 percent. National Bank of Greece, Piraeus, Alpha Bank and Eurobank all slumped, with up to €7.7 billion wiped off their combined market values since the election. Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras, who was sworn in as prime minister on Monday, on Tuesday appointed the economist Yanis Varoufakis, a fellow fierce opponent of European-imposed austerity, as Greece’s finance minister.

The move was seen as a further sign that Greece is on a collision course with the EU over repaying debt and maintaining its bail-out programme, which currently expires on February 28. Mr Varoufakis, who studied at the University of Essex, has described Greece’s austerity agreements as “fiscal waterboarding”. The bank sell-off pulled the Athens Stock Exchange down 6.4 percent on Wednesday amid further warnings that Syriza and its coalition partners, the right-wing Independent Greek party, will struggle to come to an agreement with the Troika of the ECB, International Monetary Fund and European Union.

There are, however, three problems.

The first is that it relies on the Greek government persuading its electorate that the debts have been reduced while all the other eurozone countries are simultaneously persuading their populations that they haven’t been. Expect arcane formulae and opaque language.

The second is that this isn’t a new trick. The interest rates paid by Greece on most of its debts have already been cut or suspended and the average loan period can be measured in decades rather than years. Just how low can interest rates get squeezed and how long can loan periods be extended before eurozone taxpayers realise that never-never means never?

The last is that Tsipras announced in his speech that he wants Greek debts halved. That amounts to around €160 billion of loans being written off. Amending and extending Greece’s debts will help finesse things a bit. But not that much. Perhaps the gap between expectations in Brussels and Athens really is irreconcilable.

Speaking at a conference in the kingdom, Khalid al-Falih, chief executive of Saudi Aramco - the country's state-run oil company - said: “Supply and demand and the rules of economics will govern. It will take time for the current glut to be removed.” He added that the kingdom was now pumping 9.8m bpd of oil, around 300,000 barrels more than its output measured by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec).

The kingdom has been the main catalyst within the cartel for pursuing a policy of allowing oil prices to fall in order to take back market share from producers outside Opec such as the US and Russia. In November, largely at Saudi Arabia's insistance, Opec members agreed to leave output unchanged at 30 million bpd, triggering a dramatic slump in the price of oil. Brent crude has fallen 60 percent since June and was trading at around $48 per barrel on Tuesday.

Nor, it seems, will those rockets be the end of the story. They were a response that could be carried out relatively quickly and easily, but we ought to presume that Hezbollah and Iran are also planning a more ambitious retaliation, which will take longer to prepare. Meanwhile, they’re maintaining the Golan Heights as an unstable, active front. The fact that the Mount Hermon ski resort was evacuated after Tuesday’s rocket attack was an ancillary benefit from their standpoint. They understand quite well that a single rocket every few days would be enough to paralyze the ski season.

Israel’s response was measured: a few artillery shells fired at the Syrian position from which the rockets were launched. This signaled to Hezbollah and Iran that Israel has a clear policy. A mass-casualty attack, or the opening of a new front, will elicit a severe response. But if its enemies don’t demonstratively cross its red lines, Israel will do everything it can to contain the escalation and prevent a war.

The concept of a tripwire, McCain explained, is the positioning of American and NATO troops in countries sharing a border with Russia, in order to deter a Russian invasion, a scenario some leaders in the United States and NATO anticipate. Such a tripwire would involve a greater military presence than has been designated under NATO’s Readiness Action Plan, a program implemented in 2014 which increases troop rotations and readiness in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, McCain said.

McCain also agreed with statements delivered by former National Security Advisor for the Jimmy Carter administration, Zbigniew Brzezinski who said that if Russia were to make a military incursion into a NATO state it would indicate "the end of NATO.” Under the NATO charter, the 26 member alliance is bound to a collective defense doctrine, stipulating that an attack against one or more of the partner states will be considered an attack on all.

“Everyone knows this is going on,” said one US Embassy official, speaking privately. It is almost impossible to determine how much the insurgents are spending, making it difficult to pinpoint the sources of the funds. The manager of an Afghan firm with lucrative construction contracts with the US government builds in a minimum of 20 percent for the Taliban in his cost estimates. The manager, who will not speak openly, has told friends privately that he makes in the neighborhood of $1 million per month.

Out of this, $200,000 is siphoned off for the insurgents. If negotiations fall through, the project will come to harm — road workers may be attacked or killed, bridges may be blown up, engineers may be assassinated. The degree of cooperation and coordination between the Taliban and aid workers is surprising, and would most likely make funders extremely uncomfortable.

One Afghan contractor, speaking privately, told friends of one project he was overseeing in the volatile south. The province cannot be mentioned, nor the particular project. “I was building a bridge,” he said, one evening over drinks. “The local Taliban commander called and said ‘don’t build a bridge there, we’ll have to blow it up.’ I asked him to let me finish the bridge, collect the money — then they could blow it up whenever they wanted. We agreed, and I completed my project.”

The Jewish Home party has declared the “Temple Mount” as the most sacred site for Jews throughout the world, while the newly formed Kulanu leader, Moshe Kahlon, has stated that “Our party supports the absolute unity of Jerusalem in any future political framework agreement.” The Old City in Jerusalem will be under Israeli sovereignty. The “leftist” Zionist party Meretz has also come out in support of the right of Jews to pray in the Temple Mount.

The Commission urged the international community, and in particular the Arab states, to act in order to halt Israel's gross violations of Palestinian rights, adding that the failure to take action serves to perpetuate the Israeli authorities' violation of the sanctity of al Aqsa.

The Fed also chose to reiterate that it would remain "patient" in normalising monetary policy and raising rates from their historic lows of 0.25 percent. Collapsing oil prices and weak inflation meant investors has been expecting a hike to be pushed towards the latter end of the year.

But the Fed's bullish outlook on the economy now signal any interest rate rise could "occur sooner than currently anticipated", according to Sebastien Galy at Societe Generale.

That includes actual Nazis, crypto-Nazis, actual Communists, and former Communists like Syriza, who won power, though not an outright majority, with an unexpectedly strong 36 percent of the vote. It turns out that keeping a country in a 1930s-style depression creates 1930s-style politics.

Europe isn't panicking, though, because things are going according to plan. Or at least close enough. Any economist could have told them, and plenty of them did, that something like this was bound to happen if countries share monetary, but not fiscal, policy. That's because, at some point, one country will need hard and another one will need loose money. And whichever one loses out will spiral out of control if there aren't fiscal transfers to slow them down or speed them up. But the common currency doesn't have these kind of shock absorbers. That means the euro not only pushes countries into, but also keeps them stuck in depressions.

The irony, of course, is that the euro was supposed to be a paper monument to peace and prosperity that brought people together. But, for now at least, it's made prosperity impossible and driven them apart instead, reviving old prejudices, stirring new ones, and making people more, not less, nationalistic.

So much for a United States of Europe.

Today, euroscepticism and nationalism are on the rise. Anti-Europe parties thrive on the continent’s chronic economic malaise. Over 25 million Europeans are now out of work, with youth unemployment nearing 25 per cent, particularly in the southern countries. Many migrate internally, seeking opportunity but stirring resentment among locals. Populist politicians capitalise. Nigel Farage talks of immigration making parts of England “unrecognisable’’, an approach adopted by Morten Messerschmidt in Denmark and Marine Le Pen in France where anti-semitism is also rampant.

Compounding its problems is what many see as “the creeping Islamisation of Europe’’. For a half-century, coinciding with reduced European birthrates and increased ageing populations, millions of migrants arrived from North and sub-Saharan Africa. Today there are 20 million Muslims in Europe. The January 7 Paris attacks were carried out by French Muslims descended from North and West African immigrants. Home-grown terrorism was also responsible for the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people as well as the 2005 London suicide bombings that killed 52 and wounded over 700. Additionally, thousands of Europe-bred Muslims leave to join the Islamic State and other jihadist groups, returning radicalised to Europe.

It has all added issues of religious tolerance and national identity to Europe’s problems. Many now reaffirm Europe’s Judeo/Christian culture and a chasm grows between the continent’s native populations and its immigrant communities. Doubt increases regarding the multicultural approach to immigration which does not demand migrants integrate by learning the language and customs of their new country, and preference grows for assimilation as the debate rages. A cohesive Europe is indispensable for global stability. Collectively, the EU is the largest economy on earth. But the continent never achieved commensurate global influence and civilisation is the worse for it. Europe and its values are critical in a world disordered by extremism, cultural decline and income inequalities.

Its problem is that it never achieved political union. But as I noted previously, it is extremely difficult for a United States of Europe to take root. These are old countries, strongly similar, but each with strong history and culture, making coherence difficult. Now, new president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, wants a “stronger Europe” in the world. To get there, Europe must not only overcome its socio-economic problems, but strengthen its integration processes. This must be supported by visionary leadership particularly from France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The continent must develop its vast political potential to deal with its internal problems and play its part for a better, safer world. Europe must calm its inner turmoil.

Either she yields to the will of the Greek people and abandons austerity — which would not only make a mockery of everything that has come before, but would infuriate many Northern European governments — or she sticks to her guns. And if she chooses the latter, then Mr Tsipras might well be forced to ditch the euro, which would send shockwaves through the European economy and raise the temperature of Greek nationalism to yet greater heights.

How on earth, though, did the EU get into this mess? And how is it that more than two million ordinary Greeks ended up voting for a radical Left-wing party that includes not just socialists and eco-warriors, but Maoists and Trotskyists, like some throwback to the student politics of the Sixties? At the heart of all this is the central fault-line that runs through the eurozone itself.

As sceptics have been pointing out since the project was born, it was sheer folly to yoke together the wildly disparate economies of Northern and Southern Europe in one single currency, with interest rates dictated by the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. When Greece got into desperate trouble the sensible course would have been to let it break away from the euro and return to the drachma, effectively devaluing its currency and allowing it to become competitive again.

But because Europe’s political elite are obsessed with preserving the euro — Mrs Merkel once claimed that the end of the euro would mean the end of ‘half a century of peace in Europe’ — the Greeks were condemned to life in the economic equivalent of a straitjacket.

- Was it Angela Merkel’s fault that the Greeks borrowed far more than they could afford and then fiddled the figures?

- Was it Mrs Merkel’s fault they ran one of the most corrupt tax-collection systems in the Western world, losing an almost incredible €20 billion a year in unpaid taxes?

- Was it Mrs Merkel’s fault that the Greeks were forced to come begging to her for help?

So when Syriza insists that the German Chancellor simply must abandon her austerity programme and reschedule (or even cancel) Athens’s financial obligations, I am afraid I have little sympathy for the party’s stance. If Mrs Merkel gives in, after all that has gone before, won’t every other indebted European country be queuing up at the German Chancellery, demanding that their debts be forgiven, too?

Won’t countries such as Ireland, which quietly swallowed austerity as the inevitable price for its leaders’ greed and incompetence, be justly furious that the Greeks have been made a special case? And won’t German taxpayers be outraged that, having managed their own affairs with exemplary rectitude, they now have to subsidise a far-left Greek regime that won power by insulting its biggest creditor?

There is already a strong nationalist element to Syriza’s appeal, as there so often is on the far left. Even watching the pictures from Athens on Sunday, it was striking to see so many anti-German placards and banners. (Indeed, Mr Tsipras made a point yesterday of laying roses at a memorial to Greek victims of the Nazis.)

And although Greece’s far right Golden Dawn party won only 17 out of 300 seats, it is perfectly possible that it could benefit when, as is inevitable, Syriza’s support begins to evaporate. For the plain, unarguable fact is that Mr Tsipras cannot possibly match the inflated expectations of his supporters. Basic economic common sense — not to mention the implacable Mrs Merkel — simply will not allow it. It is perfectly possible, therefore, that the next few months will see increasingly bitter exchanges between Berlin and Athens, culminating in a messy and acrimonious Greek exit from the euro.

Indeed, Angela Merkel now faces a deeply uncomfortable dilemma. She could seek a compromise with the new government, agreeing to relax the crippling conditions imposed on Greece for retaining the single currency.

But if she does this, what is to stop larger, debt-ridden eurozone members from demanding similar concessions. Indeed, the question being asked across the continent is: Will Spain be next?

Alternatively, Mrs Merkel could hold firm, ignore the voters – and dare Syriza’s leader, Alexis Tsipras, to default on Greece’s debts and readopt the drachma. But again, wouldn’t this encourage other countries to cut and run, causing renewed economic mayhem?

This paper recognises there are no easy answers. But with extremist parties on the rise throughout Europe, the first lesson of this dramatic result is surely that sticking plasters are not enough to hold the single currency together. Before another generation is blighted, Europhiles must acknowledge that one size simply doesn’t fit all. Indeed, we need a radical but orderly restructuring of the continent’s currency system, to return economic policy to democratic control.

Between 1948 and 1967, for the first time in Jewish history, Jews were denied any access to their Jerusalem holy sites. In 1967, the Jordanian Wakf – complicit in Jordan’s Judenrein policy – was allowed to retain control over the Temple Mount. This was an almost inconceivable act of good will; that good will has been betrayed over and over and over. The signing of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court should be the final straw.

Israel should say, “the PA is right, war crimes are very serious. The PA’s grand mufti of Jerusalem has explicitly supported suicide bombings, and on the 47th anniversary of Fatah’s founding, delivered a speech which included an exhortation to kill Jews in the end times. So inasmuch as the Wakf endorses war crimes, its authority in Jerusalem is terminated.”

To begin with, Israel should stress that religious oversight of the Dome of the Rock and the Aksa mosque won’t be taken away from Muslims. It should transfer that authority to Israeli Muslims; the religious conduct of Israel’s thriving Muslim community shouldn’t be subordinated to the PA. The rest of the Mount should be repossessed by the Knesset, on behalf of the nation that built it, and delegated to a dedicated Temple Mount antiquities council. In addition to being Israel’s most important historical site, the Mount plays a central role in the history of Western civilization.

There’s no reason any of this should interfere with Muslim religious observance. On Muslim holidays, Muslims could have exclusive access to the Mount. On Christmas and Easter, Christians could have exclusive access. On Jewish holidays, Jews would have exclusive access (including to the foundation stone of the Holy of Holies, the “rock” atop which the Dome of the Rock was built). For the rest of the year, Israel would make Judaism’s holiest site open to everyone. No discrimination against Muslims, merely an end to discrimination against everyone else.

Israel has to do something in response to the PA’s signing the Rome Statute, and whatever that something is will provoke a deafening international outcry. At least this way instead of a hollow PR victory, or more likely, a PR non-victory, something substantial will be accomplished. Something substantial that Jews have been working towards for 2,000 years. Next year in the heart of Jerusalem.