Foreign investors are gung ho. The country is now the prime investment destination among the countries in transition. In a typical daily occurrence, bucking a global trend, Matsushita intends to expand its television factory in Plzen. Its investment of $8 million will enhance the plant's payroll by one tenth to 1900 workers. Siemens - a German multinational - is ploughing $50 million into its Czech unit. Siemens Elektromotory's 3000 employees export $130 million worth of electrical engines annually. None of this would have been possible without Germany's vote of confidence and overwhelming economic presence in the Czech Republic. The deteriorating fortunes of the Czech economy are, indeed, intimately linked to the economic stagnation of its northern neighbor, as many an economist bemoan. But this only serves to prove that the former's recovery is dependent on the latter's resurrection. Either way, to have so overtly and blatantly abandoned Germany in its time of need would surely prove to be a costly miscalculation. The Czechs - like other central and east European countries - mistook a transatlantic tiff for a geopolitical divorce and tried to implausibly capitalize on the yawning rift that opened between the erstwhile allies. Yet, Germany is one of the largest trading partners of the United States. American firms sell $24 billion worth of goods annually there - compared to $600 million in Poland. Germany's economy is five to six times the aggregated output of the EU's central European new members plus Slovakia. According to the New York Times, there are 1800 American firms on German soil, with combined sales of $583 billion and a workforce of 800,000 people. Due to its collapsing competitiveness and rigid labor laws, Germany's multinationals relocate many of their operations to central and east Europe, Asia and north and Latin America. Even with its current malaise, Germany invested in 2001 $43 billion abroad and attracted $32 billion in fresh foreign capital. Indeed, supporting the United States was seen by the smaller countries of the EU as a neat way to counterbalance Germany's worrisome economic might and France's often self-delusional aspirations at helmsmanship. A string of unilateral dictates by the French-German duo to the rest of the EU - regarding farm subsidies and Europe's constitution, for instance - made EU veterans and newcomers alike edgy. Hence the deliberate public snub. Still, grandstanding apart, the nations of central Europe know how ill-informed are recent claims in various American media that their region is bound to become the new European locomotive in lieu of an aging and self preoccupied Germany. The harsh truth is that there is no central European economy without Germany. And, at this stage, there is no east European economy, period. Consider central Europe's most advanced post-communist economy.