There was once a plan for a really huge (I think 80 km) collider in the USA. They had already hired 2000 people. Then the program was canceled. Quite a number of these scientists made their way into finance and made complex derivatives a lot more popular.

So without CERN Europe may have simply more financial ABS, CDO, CDS, SIV soup. In some countries this counts as productivity increase, but on this I prefer the Internet.

Der Amerikaner ist die Orchidee unter den Menschen
Volker Pispers