THE SICK MAN IS EUROPE :

Swiss malaise : Why Europe is sick at its coreM (Paul Erdman, Aug. 22, 2002 , CBS.MarketWatch.com)

[T]poster boy for the economic malaise that is increasingly enveloping Europe is its former star performer, Switzerland.

The pillars of that country's unique post-World War II prosperity are today crumbling, one after another. What that country may end up with is a socialist state devoid of entrepreneurship, behind the curve in technology, burdened with an aging population and declining educational standards. As if this were not bad enough, as a result of revelations of Swiss cooperation with the Nazis during World War II, and its continuing practice of using bank secrecy to attract dirty money from every crooked corner of the world, it is a nation that is also increasingly regarded as amoral, a pariah.

It's not possible to exaggerate just how serious the decline of Europe may be. It is a sign of lunacy that people have recently been moving money from American stock exchanges to Europe. America may have had a tech bubble but the belief that the EU has a future is itself a speculative bubble fueled by irrational exuberance. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 24, 2002 3:06 PM