Euro's big boys try to change rules of the game

There's a certain irony in the situation where the weakness of the euro is attributed not to the smaller member-states of European Economic and Monetary Union, but to the very states whose participation was at the outset seen as vital for the prospects of the currency.

While Ireland's central bankers and politicians have sweated away under the burden of low rates which are not suitable to our booming economy, the states who saw the same low rates as vital to restore growth in the European economy seem hellbent on sabotaging the whole exercise.

First there was Gerhard Schroder, Chancellor of the oft-labelled powerhouse economy of the euro zone, whose inopportune intervention into the Vodafone Airtouch hostile bid for Mannesmann on behalf of the local company set loose a bout of jitters among currency traders about the true strength of the commitment of Germany's Social Democrats to a pan-European capitalist economy.

Scarcely had the furore abated than well-placed rumours hit the marketplace that the Bank of France - headed by Jean-Claude Trichet, who hopes to replace Wim Duisenberg mid-term as president of the European Central Bank - had intervened to prevent Dutch banking group ING announcing a bid for French bank CCF.

With leadership like this, don't be in any hurry to trade in your pounds for euros just yet.