Two basic scenarios should be considered:

1. optimistic version

Euroland makes one economic zone for a region with 290 million citizens, 19% of world output, 19% of world trade and $3.6 trillion in equity values. That dwarfs Japan on all counts and even tops the US on population and world trade.

More important, the restrictions imposed on participating nations for the introduction of the Euro will whip Europe into shape. Spending  nations like Italy, Spain and France have already been compelled, under the treaties establishing the currency, to back budgets and cut their borrowing, helping interest rates tumble across Europe. Next overweight corporations, long sheltered from competition by a crazy quilt of local regulations and prices, will find themselves plunged into a bigger, broader market.

Prices will fall, mergers will abound, industry will get more efficient.

And  then there's the peace dividend: As German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, one of the Euro's fathers, put it:  bringing Europe closer "is a question of war and peace in the 21st century. Integration is the most effective insurance against a backslide into chauvinism and war."

The gross domestic product in the 11 Euro states is on the upswing from 1.5% growth in 1996, to 2.5 % 1997, 2.9 % 1998 year and 2.6 % 1999. Inflation poses no threat; interest rates are low; and consumer spending is on the rise.

Finally European industry is getting into fighting trim. Big corporations  have been shutting down unprofitable subsidiaries, closing old factories, laying off workers. That's what U.S. industry began doing a decade ago, and analysts reckon it added two percentage points a year to average profit growth; they expect the same now in Europe.

2 negative version

Europe isn't an island. It may have  weathered the Asian crisis better than the U.S., with just 0.6 % of GDP sacrificed 1998. But the economic gloom is spreading across the world: Brazil is suffering,  Russia is bankrupt  and the  American economy is starting to feel the pain of Asia´s recession.

The big fear: Europe's economy - Euro ready or not - can't sustain growth on its own. With that in mind, economists for the past month have been reducing their European growth forcasts. One publication for instance, recently trimmed its estimate for Eurolands economic growth next year to 2.7 % from the 2.9 % predicted only a month earlier. And it cut its forecast of corporate profit growth in Europe this year to 11% from 13%.

In addition politics could spoil the party. There are bound to be several political crises along the way to union- any one of which could wipe out an ill-timed investment. Unemployment could spike up again, forcing a showdown between  big spenders in the national governments and tight-money administrators  at the new European Central Bank. If the bank prevails, local industries suffer. If the national politicians prevail, the Euros value sinks.

Or  another thinkable scenario:  the world´s economic problems finally push the   U.S. economy into recession and the dollar declines.

Then a rift could develop between those Euroland members most dependent on U.S. trade, and those least; in that clash, their bond yields would diverge, and-in the hard-hit Euroland states -borrowing costs and economic woes would rise.

And then there's Russia.  Many Western European companies are heavy investors in Russia, and its banks have made $90 billion in loans there.  The likely magnitude of any Russian debacle can be estimated around one percentage point of the EU's gross domestic product.

And finally: unemployment, still at a disastrous 11.2 % rate in Euroland. Less income, less to spend. No spending, no growth.