LONDON -- Britain now receives more inward investment than any other country in the world. So says the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) based in Paris.

But wait a minute. How can that possibly be? Was not it asserted, at the highest levels in both Britain and other European governments, that unless Britain signed up to the euro currency it would lose inward investment disastrously? And was not this view supported by distinguished industrialists and top economists all round the world, including in Japan?

Those who believed so strongly a few years back that Britain had to join the euro zone went even further. Britain, they argued, would be dangerously excluded from key European economic decisions. It would lose out in the European Union growth stakes and the City of London would be bypassed as centers like Frankfurt, within the euro zone, grew in power. The pound was certain to collapse.