Leaders in Euro Zone Shift Focus Beyond Gloom

Is the “end of the euro” over? Among political and business leaders gathering in Davos for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, the talk seems to be have shifted away from doomsday forecasts of an imminent euro collapse, the International Herald Tribune reported. Instead, the debate is now focusing on the best way for the euro zone to weather an economic downturn and whether it can emerge stronger from the ordeal. Leaders like Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany are displaying a renewed will to preserve the common currency and are appearing more united. Business leaders have made clear their desperate desire to save the euro zone. And the European Central Bank’s willingness to flood the banking system with cash has won crucial time. “Europe is a great and magnificent project,” Mrs. Merkel, who is not normally known for florid pro-European oratory, said Wednesday in Davos. “We wish to further develop this great achievement.” But in light of the many policy mistakes made by Mrs. Merkel and other European leaders in the past, there are still plenty of doubters. Economists like Kenneth S. Rogoff at Harvard University remain skeptical that the euro can survive the tension between indebted, slow-growing countries in the south and economically healthier ones in the north. Read more.