(MONEY Magazine) – Americans living in Europe quickly learn that every Tom, Didier and Helmut has an ax to grind about the world's last superpower. "What do you think of this Henry Kissinger?" demanded my wife's London tailor recently. But ever since Enron, we're asked less about America's alleged war crimes than about its financial ones. American capitalism is a mess, and Europeans just can't help gloating.

They're capitalists on this side of the Atlantic too, but companies are still run differently. They answer not so much to individual investors or fund managers as to a smaller club of key shareholders, such as the Agnelli family in Italy or Deutsche Bank in Germany. It's all very cozy and elitist. Yet even many left-wing Europeans accept the system because it is stable, discouraging takeovers and layoffs. The U.S.-led bull market put pressure on Europe to change, but that's over for now. In July, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, facing re-election and 10% unemployment, gleefully pointed to the latest American examples of "egotism practiced at the top under the catchphrase 'shareholder value.'"

Living here, I've come to appreciate the value Europeans put on things that can't be measured (or made up) on a quarterly income statement. Still, I'm not betting on a resurgence of some alternative Euro-capitalism. The recent U.S. scandals have sent the euro soaring to parity with the dollar, but this will probably hurt European companies that depend on U.S. consumers more than it hurts Americans. The trouble with gloating is that this isn't an American crisis. It's everyone's.

--Pat Regnier