There is understandable concern about the ongoing weakness of the euro. The fledgling currency is now in free-fall, and it is clear from media reports that the consequences will include a rise in interest rates, a surge in inflation, pressure on mortgage repayments, an increase in divorce applications, the failure of marriage, global juvenile delinquency, the collapse of the Catholic Church, the breakdown of law and order, intercontinental rioting, pillage on a grand scale, systematic looting, destruction of property, indiscriminate rape, mass murder, disintegration of society, permanent eclipse of the sun, dissolution of the Earth's core, unravelling of the ozone layer, erosion of tectonic plates, nuclear meltdown, the end of the world and apocalypse now.

As the Irish Independent sagely advised on Tuesday, it is time to start thinking of a "rainy day scenario".

Not surprisingly, the bankers and politicians are attempting to play things down.

On Monday the euro suffered its sharpest one-day fall since its launch, plunging to new lows against the dollar, but European finance ministers denied that there was any crisis and said there were no calls for central bank intervention.

Indeed, European Central Bank president Wim Duisenberg did not even feel the need to comment, thus reinforcing what this newspaper referred to as "the perception" that the ECB itself does not know how to proceed.

Actually, there is a perception that the ECB's right hand never has more than a vague idea of what its left hand might be doing, apart perhaps from waving fondly at Alan Greenspan.

And if it does, Wim doesn't tell anybody.

Wim Duisenberg's signature will appear on our euro-notes in 2002. But the man has already made his mark - invisibly, so to speak. As a banker, Duisenberg makes Fort Knox look like a monument to openness and transparency.

Since the long night nearly two years ago when he finally won the ECB presidency as a compromise candidate, after a typical fudge agreed by the French and the Germans, he has given no more than a dozen on-the-record interviews.

Moreover, Duisenberg refuses to publish the ECB inflation forecasts which inform its monetary policy, and he has stated that the minutes and voting records of its council meetings will remain secret for as long as anybody taking part in them remains in office.

The decisions of the ECB affect the livelihoods of more than 300 million people.

On the plus side, the 65-year-old country-music-loving Dutchman is hailed as the world's most dishevelled central banker, and he has said on the record that while it is normal for politicians to give advice to central banks, "it would be abnormal if those suggestions were listened to".

He's not all bad, then.

Meanwhile, back to the rainy day preparations.

With the euro in trouble, what should we be doing? Buying umbrellas?

Perhaps not. Instead of an umbrella, the Government has acquired a cushion in the form of a Budget surplus, plus a few bob put away for unforeseen contingencies.

However, for the man in the street this is a rather dreary option. Nobody wants to be thinking of cushions or indeed of any dreary old home furnishings when there are still last-minute opportunities - just before financial annihilation - to lash out on more glamorous consumer durables.

Also, you will be drier in a flash new car than under an umbrella, and just as comfortable as you would be lolling at home, bored to death on your cash-filled cushions. And if monetary collapse and the end of civilisation are indeed just around the corner, we may as well go out in the style we have become accustomed to: in debt.

It was the legendary US Federal Reserve chairman William McChesney Martin who said that the Fed's job was to take away the punchbowl before the party got under way.

If the European party really is about to end, we might as well have one for the road.