Europeans are aghast that their putative common currency, the euro, has come crashing through the floor. America's shifting attention from Europe to the Asian Pacific economies ultimately may be the reason for the euro's dire straits, writes PNS editor Franz Schurmann. Schurmann has repeatedly predicted the euro's decline ever since it was launched in 1999.

Recently the Wall Street Journal summarized its vision of the global economy in 12 words: "The developing world sells, the U.S. buys and Japan pays for it." How come there is no mention of Europe?

In this view, developing countries make and export the myriad of products available to consumers in retail outlets. The most important developing economies are China and Southeast Asia. The biggest consumer is the U.S.

Japan "pays," because, as the Journal puts it, it is "blessed with a population of compulsive savers and cursed with few investment opportunities at home."

In other words, Japanese have money but invest it not in their sluggish domestic economy, but abroad, especially in the United States. That creates more jobs here, thereby enabling Americans to buy more exports, especially from China and Southeast Asia.

Why don't the Japanese pour some of their excess money into the European Union? Those countries, with a combined population around 350 million, are also overflowing with cash. Last year most showed 3-4 percent growth rates.

But the EU is cursed with persistent unemployment. And lately a dark cloud over Europe has been growing bigger and bigger -- the relentless decline of the value of the euro, the EU's common currency.

The Japanese are appalled by European officials' indifference to the euro's decline. They say Europe has all the economic basics in place for a sturdy economy. Why then won't it take off?

For their part, European officials are exasperated with Japan for not doing more to revive its sluggish economy as a revived Japan would import more from Europe.

But the decline of the euro indicates something deeper.

Most ordinary Europeans neither like nor trust the euro, yet a concerted effort by Europe's leaders could make its value rise swiftly and people would readily accept it as common currency on schedule, January 1, 2002.

Unfortunately, Europe remains a continent of separate countries. Some, notably Germany and Italy, are still afflicted by deep-rooted regionalism. Officials and bureaucrats may have learned to work together at the top, but lower down it's different.

There are three great currencies in the world. Using the tree as a metaphor, the American dollar is its trunk. Then come two sturdy branches, the Japanese yen and the German mark. Then higher up come all the other currencies. The yen, Japanese officials believe, is too sturdy for it's own good. But the mark has been going down vis-a-vis the dollar and the yen in tandem with the euro.

Of all the world's great civilizations, Europe alone has been plagued by endemic disunity. It is fragmented by religion and culture, and periods of political unity have been short.

Currencies are more than repositories of value. Trust in a currency can be a key force binding people together. The German mark has become the common currency in the Balkans, yet Germany and the EU have done nothing to pull that conflicted region together.

Much of the strength of the dollar and the yen comes from the high-tech prowess. Germany is an industrial giant, but a hi-tech midget. It is now offering permanent residence to some 20,000 talented Indian scientists in a desperate move to get some high-tech action going.

Germany resembles Japan in some ways. Their populations are declining, and much of the energy behind their extraordinary post-war recoveries has dissipated. As they age their people want to enjoy life rather than move toward new frontiers.

But there is a big difference. Germany is surrounded by countries that also have lost economic energy -- all smaller or less potent than Germany. On the other hand Japan's neighbors are mostly more vigorous than it is -- South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore and above all, the rapidly rising Chinese giant.

America remains the leader of the global economy. But unlike the 1950s and 1960s it now looks no longer in a Euro-Atlantic but in an Asia-Pacific direction. This, in the end, may be the ultimate reason why the euro is fading.