Europe's public finances Weighed down

THE BAD thing for politicians about good news on the economy is that they can no longer avert their eyes from the state of public finances. Figures released on November 13th showed that the euro-area economy crawled out of recession in the three months to the end of September. GDP rose by 0.4%, the first quarterly increase for more than a year. Given the scale of the downturn, the recovery is modest: GDP was still 4.1% lower than a year earlier. Read the complete article in The Economist here.