[Start] with the obvious, but widely ignored, observation that it is hard for poor countries to become rich and a lot easier for rich countries to stay that way. Although Europe accounts for only 12 per cent of the world’s population, it possesses 40 per cent of its wealth. Even modest economic growth rates produce big output gains. Conversely, even when a China or an India becomes collectively rich, its peoples will remain relatively poor, because of their sheer weight of numbers.

The point is illustrated in Jacques Marseille’s provocative book, La guerre des deux France, a counterblast against France’s pessimists. He estimates that between 1973 and 2001, China's gross domestic product per head increased by 320 per cent. Over the same period, France’s GDP per head expanded by a “miserable” 60 per cent. Nonetheless, in absolute terms, in 1990 prices, the gap between GDP per head in France and China widened from $12,284 to $17,509 over those years. Such is the beauty of starting from a high base.

Moreover, Europe’s dirty secret is that it is really rather good at globalisation. Germany has regained its position as the world’s biggest exporter. European stock markets are stuffed with flourishing multinational companies, reporting record profits, that more than hold their own against US rivals. The success of the US or Asia does not necessarily spell Europe’s doom. Indeed, it is a policy stimulus and a sales and investment opportunity. As the Chinese trade minister recently observed, China has to sell 800m shirts to buy one A380 aeroplane.

Euro-pessimism may be most intense at the Continent’s core but it dissipates the further you move from the centre. Europe’s “peripheral” countries, such as Ireland, the Baltic states or Turkey, are registering robust rates of economic growth and have much to teach “Old Europe”. These countries have shown it is possible to lift their economic performance through tough reforms. The Nordic states have also demonstrated how to overhaul welfare states without shredding them.
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Philip Roth, the American writer, has described history as the process by which the unexpected is turned into the inevitable. Futurology tends to reverse that process: predicting the inevitable while inevitably ignoring the unexpected. Many such futurologists predict it is all over for Europe. But regions of the world, like investment trends, fall in and out of fashion as the world turns and times change.