The recent Swedish vote to reject membership of the "common" european currency - the euro - by an impressive margin of 14 per cent, is yet another sign that the world monetarysgroupsis unlikely to be revolutionized by events in Europe anytime soon.

　　For many years now exaggerated expectations about the impact of the currency have been undermined by the dismal economic performance of the Euro-Zone, which has consistenctly fallen behind that of neighbouring European countries, to say nothing of countries in other and more dynamic regions, such as North America and East Asia.

　　As denizens of a relatively open and globalized economy with high standards of administrative probity, despite a garganuan welfare state and concomitant stratospheric taxation rates, Swedes proved unwilling to commit themselves to a multinational economic arrangement whose prospects seem cloudier by the month.

　　The benefits of uniform European money are superficially compelling, based upon the elimination of the currency transaction friction bedevilling cross-border business and tourism. Yet these advantages are dwarfed by the potentially devastating costs resulting from entanglement in the Euro-Zone's failing social and economic model.

　　Those glibly comparing the euro to the US dollar purely on the respective sizes of the two "economies" have typically been at the forefront of the euro-boosters, predicting a rapid take-off of the euro as a world reserve currency. Such predictions have begun colliding with certain uncomfortable realities, such as the fact that the Euro-Zone does not constitute an "economy" in any way comparable to the US - in which people share a language, an entrepreneurial culture and a willingness to move freely within a continent in search of work or business opportunities.

　　Regional economic fortunes are ultimately based upon productivity (more particularly upon TFP or Total Factor Productivity, in which gains from increased inputs are discounted, leaving only sheer improvement in economic efficiency).

　　In this regard Europe's recent performance has been extremely weak, with the upward spiral driven by post-war reconstruction now thoroughly exhausted amid trade union obstructionism, a deteriorated welfarist culture, massive over-regulation and a back-drop of calamitous demographic decline.

　　The market-phobia pervading the cultural environment of the Euro-Zone countries is now reaping its inevitable consequences: economic decay, mass unemployment and petty geostrategic vindictiveness. Under these circumstances an enthusiastic world-wide uptake of the euro would be nothing short of miraculous.

　　France and Germany are now in open defiance of the European Central Bank rules they previously endorsed so keenly, leaving smaller Euro-Zone countries increasingly embittered by their cynical double-standards. As such conflicts intensify, in an atmosphere darkened by prolonged economic stagnation and rising social tensions, even the continued existence of the euro is likely to come into question.

　　Increasingly the EU's euro "opt-outs" - the UK, Sweden and Denmark - could come to appear as avatars of a future post-euro world, rather than stubborn laggards retarding the progress of the ill-starred and abysmally piloted "European Project." (By Nick Land)