Treasury dept: embracing the euro.(The Talk of the Town)

The Italians say "e-ur-o." The Germans say "oi-ro." The Spanish haven't decided what to say, except that the "o" is loud. The French say something unpronounceable that involves turning your mouth into a small hole, about the size of a euro coin. And the Brits, who don't have to say anything, stare pointedly at their pound notes, which no one who is using euros can afford anyway. Two weeks and twelve countries into European monetary union, the economy of Western Europe hangs on a rush on pocket calculators and little plastic cards that grade vintages on one side and, on the other, change with the light to tell you how much you're really spending on the wine you've bought. Shops and restaurants in Berlin had been printing their prices in Deutsche marks and euros -- marks first, euros in parentheses -- long before the January 1st conversion deadline, and a few of them weathered a Christmas slump by reversing the order and thus doubling their profits on all but the most attentive clients. Restaurants in Paris doubled their profits simply because a hundred-euro dinner was bound to look more appetizing to more people than the same dinner at nearly seven hundred francs. Restaurants in Rome celebrated the happy coincidence of January 1st and the white-truffle season, white truffles being definitely more appetizing at forty euros than at eighty thousand lire for a small sprinkling on your pasta.

Businessmen made a bundle on the confusion, although Italians had expected to be so confused -- you could say so exponentially confused, since they'd lost more zeros to the conversion than any other country -- that Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister and a billionaire in any currency, mailed a little pocket converter to every family on the country's tax rolls. Each piccolo omaggio came with a signed eulogy to "our old and beloved lira" and an admonition to get on with it as Europeans, "at no charge." (This was quite a concession from the man who last month tried to block the placement of an E.U. food agency in Finland on the ground that "the Finns don't even know what prosciutto is.") The Prime Minister, as everyone who reads the paper (or can find a television channel that he doesn't own or control) knows, has had a certain amount of experience juggling zeros, given the number of indictments against him ...