LONDON -- The long shadow of recession is now stretching from America over Europe, bringing disappointment and unease to Europe's policymakers and business communities.

The disappointment is particularly sharp because the earlier hope was that Europe would somehow be insulated against the American economic downturn, and, in particular, that the arrival of the euro would give Europe a huge boost and accelerate the catching-up process with the giant U.S. superpower.

But none of this has happened. The German economy, supposedly Europe's main motor, has slowed to a halt. The French economy is faltering. In Britain manufacturing production is shrinking fast. Stock markets are going nowhere and the rush of industrial mergers across borders, which certainly took place at the birth of the euro, has slowed to a trickle.

For Japan, the era of economic stagnation may be all too miserably familiar, but for the Europeans it requires a harsh readjustment of attitudes.

Politicians in particular, who have lived through a decade of glorious growth and copious public revenues, are having to rethink and follow that most unpleasant of dietary patterns, the eating of words.

For example, Britain's dynamic finance minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, has repeatedly claimed that under his administration there will be "no more boom and bust." Now the "bust" is arriving, not only for scores of ambitious dot-com companies but for all kinds of businesses.

The problems for government are likely to be especially acute. In Britain's case, large injections of increased public spending -- on transport infrastructure, schools and health services -- have been boldly promised and planned into the budgetary projections.

But these relied on continued strong growth of earnings and therefore growth of the tax take. Cutting back will cause dismay and political anger, not least among the government's supporters.

Moreover, claims that the days of "boom and bust" were over, and that the business cycle could somehow be smoothed out by skilled national economic management, were always risky.

First, a recession was bound to come sometime, after the amazing decade of rapid growth and titanic global investment. The very size of the boom guarantees a major pause, at the least, and maybe a prolonged downturn.

Second, dismissal of the process of "boom and bust" misreads the way economies and societies advance and wealth is created. Innovation is the driving force in the economic process and disruptive bumps and jolts are essential as innovative stimulants. The economy is not a machine that can be kept smoothly humming by pulling this lever or that, although much of the language of economics still suggests that it is.

But third, the promise of "no more boom and bust" was always based on a deeply flawed premise -- namely that economic and monetary managers could magically manipulate the world's economies.

This belief has been especially deep-rooted in America, where almost divine powers have been attributed to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, but has also been central to European thinking. Officials juggling with interest rates, it was claimed, could somehow stave off recession and bridge the great chasms in confidence and optimism that opened up from time to time.

This belief was particularly inspired by distant memories of the 1930s and the legend that the great slump of those days could have been prevented by more enlightened central bankers, who should have cut interest rates.

But the modern economy is quite a different structure from the economy of 70 years ago, and behaves quite differently. The old theories do not apply and the honest policymaker will admit that interest rate maneuvers are marginal to the general trend -- as Japan has long since discovered.

Worse still, the old belief that budgetary adjustments -- higher spending, bigger deficits, tax concessions -- could counter the business cycle, central to original Keynesian thinking, has also proved illusory in modern conditions.

Candid political leaders ought therefore to be telling their electorates the blunt truth -- namely, that like sailing ships in a storm, there is little to be done beyond drawing in sail, battening down the hatches and steering as best one can before the wind.

But that, of course, is a highly unpopular message. One of Britain's most genial and upright postwar prime ministers, Jim Callaghan -- as it happens, a former seaman -- once told the public that the British economy had been "blown off course."

People did not like that at all; they wanted assurances that everything was under tight government control and management. The situation is the same today.

But the wisest ministers and political leaders nowadays will be those who warn against inflated expectations, explain that global forces are bigger than any government policy and that business life goes up and down, and pray for a revival in American confidence soon and that consumers there will keep on spending.

Such messages, however, require candor and courage as well as a massive refocusing of the language of public debate -- both by governments, business leaders and economic experts. And of that there is still not much sign yet in official European circles. It will have to come, but the actors who will speak such bold and telling lines are not yet upon the public stage.