Psychologists may say today is the happiest Monday of the year, but for the eurozone this early spring euphoria smacks of desperation
Nervous investors are willing the euro crisis to solve itself. They talk cheerily of successful bond auctions and rising share prices.
Economic growth is just around the corner. Look at Monday's consumer confidence figures from NOP for the EU. They're higher than December. An explanation for the slight rise in sentiment is hard to find. No matter, it fits with general picture of lifting gloom.
A fall in Italian interest rates on 10-year bond yields put a smile on traders' faces at another "successful" debt auction. Demand for Spanish debt was also up. Italy now pays less than 6% and Spain less than 5%.
Yet while 30 January might be "the happiest Monday of the year", according to David Holmes, a senior psychologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, this early spring euphoria smacks of desperation.
The Spanish and Italian prime ministers are in Brussels on Monday begging for the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, to relent on austerity or risk social unrest that could see them both toppled. The stakes are high. Italians are prepared to riot rather than accept huge cuts in their incomes to save German banks. It is one thing to make sacrifices to save your own banks, but another country's? Spanish protesters have so far preferred a more peaceful route. But now there is a rightwing government in place, no one can say if violence is not the next step.
Germany is under pressure because all the real economic figures are going the wrong way. Spain's economy has contracted for the first time in two years. Its unemployment record is now the worst in the eurozone at 22.8%.
Greece's public spending cuts are pushing the economy further into recession. In Portugal, business and consumer confidence has hit a record low, the latter battered by the lower salaries and across-the-board tax hikes that were part of Portugal's painful austerity programme.
Portugal is sliding towards becoming the next Greece – needing a second bailout to avoid chaotic bankruptcy. Banks have raised the cost of insuring government bonds against default and insisted the money be paid upfront instead of over years. It now costs a record €3.9m (£3.3m) to insure €10m of Portuguese debt.
How can anyone be cheery with all this going on?
The Brussels elite are preparing a statement that will declare their sympathies for the EU's 23 million unemployed and a token gesture of cash to help out. But they and the markets are, as usual, deluded.
On Monday morning, a spokesman for the right-wing FDP, which is Merkel's main coalition partner, said he could not make the terms for Greece, or any other indebted country, easier because that would mean explaining to the German public its money would take longer to be paid back or not be paid back at all.
Maybe, once the French election is out of the way, the German treasury will back cheaper interest rates for indebted countries through eurobonds. Maybe higher fiscal transfers will be forthcoming, which will add up to bigger debt write-offs. But the magnitude of the debt write-offs needed for Ireland and Portugal, as well as Greece, have yet to be factored into the euro equation.