Hello there,

I must confess … I'm starting to get a little sick of writing and talking about the euro each week. But boredom is no reason to ignore the story (!) especially when the ramifications are so far and wide.

We focused on Greece for so long … then people started talking about Portugal and Spain … France and Germany then entered the frame as the strong economies which needed to come to the rescue … and even the UK, outside of the eurozone, with its new government is talking a lot about reducing the country's deficit so it doesn't find itself facing similar problems.

Now we see Timothy Geithner, the US treasury secretary, hopping on a plane and landing in Europe … a not-so-subtle prod to all of those countries that their problems can apparently swim, and are already washing up on the shores of the US.

This is, simply, looking like a crisis with no end – perhaps because the very fundamentals of the euro currency and the eurozone were incorrect in the first place.

Last week on AJE News, Samah el-Shahat was broadcasting from Brussels, and she made this very simple but pertinent point – while it was hoped the creation of the euro would help drag smaller countries up to a more competitive level, all it is doing (at the moment) is dragging the bigger countries down, and setting off all sorts of contagion fears across the continent and the rest of the world.

So clearly we'll zero in (again!) on Europe this week … but not just the debt and currency woes. France is striking over pension reform, British Airways is striking over working conditions – on the latter, we'll have a report from Barbara Serra who was there at London Heathrow for day one of the strike.

Plus keep an eye out for the latest on the BP oil spill, the apparent demise of Iraq's national carrier, and the OECD's latest global economic outlook.

And please keep your story suggestions and comments coming … tweet or direct message me on twitter – the name is @AJCountingCost.

Counting the Cost can be seen each week at the following times GMT: Friday: 1430, 2030; Saturday: 0430, 1230, 1900; Sunday: 0130, 1630; Monday: 0830; Tuesday: 0600.