When will the euro collapse? It’s already dead

Anyone who spends their time analyzing the euro debt crisis will know that there is one question you get asked again and again. When will the single currency finally collapse?

You can have fun giving a spuriously precise answer — July 28th, 2014, is my favorite (look it up on Wikipedia if you are wondering why).

But the truth is no one really knows. The euro could stagger on from crisis summit to emergency bailout for another decade. Then again, it could be gone by the end of the month — if Greece is refused its third bailout, the country may be kicked out, and the entire currency could unravel over the course of a few chaotic days.

In reality, whether it is a few months or a decade away does not make as much difference as you might suppose.

Why not? Because in most of the ways that actually matter, the euro is already dead.

It no longer meets most of the criteria of a working form of money. There is an important point in that for investors. It is right now — while the currency no longer lives but still staggers on like a zombie — that the euro is wreaking most havoc on the countries of Europe. Once it is finally taken apart, markets in those nations can start to recover — potentially very rapidly.

Of course the euro still looks like a currency. There are notes and coins, and you can still go into a shop in Hamburg, or a café in Naples, and get stuff in return, even if there might be a certain amount of grumbling. There is a central bank, although it doesn’t appear to have much idea what its job is. And there are payment systems and foreign exchange markets that work

Oddly enough, I doubt the Euro will collapse, for the simple reason as to how the Euro is physically made.

In the US, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing only has two printing offices capable of printing our currency, and they work all day, 7 days a week to produce enough paper money to back just 5% of daily US retail trade. Most of it is $1 bills.

This means that no matter what happens, the US cannot print more currency, or even higher denomination currency, for the simple reason that nobody could make change for $500 or $1000 bills.

If there was ever a failure of our electronic money transfer systems, or a major bank holiday, or a credit collapse, or many other potential disasters, instantly our virtual money would be worthless, and paper money would be worth 20 times its face value.

Now look at Europe. It has decentralized its bank note printing all over the continent, with printing offices operating under the guise of the central authority. But if a country like Greece left or was kicked out of the Euro, it would lose its printing privileges.

This would reduce the production of physical Euros, but there would still be physical Euros available, produced and used by more stable countries, thus restoring some of the Euros strength.

Theoretically, the Euro could just be produced and used in Germany and still survive as a currency, at about its current strength.

European *virtual* Euros, however, would be like virtual US dollars, and take the hit.

When inflation happens, nobody will bother to make change for a $500 or $1000 bill. Those bills will buy one or two gumdrops each.

There is no limit to the value of the paper money that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing prints, as it will just add more 0's to each piece of paper to make up whatever total value is needed.

And of course we now have computerized accounts, which Weimar did not. It's easy to add 0's to a computerized account. Like the Y2000 worry about using 2digit years instead of 4 digit years, the banks will need some time to allow for account levels in the billions and trillions on their reports, but it won't be an insurmountable problem.

When paper becomes insufficient to the need, credit cards will still work, and still make change for $500.

The limit is no longer in the physical banknote, be it Euros or Dollars.

Okay, a few things.

To start off with, the causes of inflation and hyperinflation are different. Hyperinflation only comes about with shortage and unchecked commodities speculation.

But the US has abundant, even overabundant commodities, even in times that we call shortage. Surpluses kill hyperinflation by killing speculation. When currency becomes unstable, abundance in most anything can become an alternative currency. Then Gresham’s law comes into effect.

I suggested why printing larger denominations won’t work as because nobody could make change, but it is also dependent on quantities of physical, not virtual currency, which technically, right now is 95% *deflated*, whereas virtual money is “even”.

And as you said, virtual money just exists on computers. But there are a whole bunch of bad things that could shut those computers down, or disconnect them from the people who theoretically have money in virtual accounts.

For example, while credit card companies are profitable, there is no way they can underwrite the hundreds of billions of dollars of users credit. So they have to issue bonds, regarded as the next safest to government bonds.

However, the credit card companies are thrown into a panic when one of these bond issues fails, as happened a year or two ago. They had to cancel hundreds of thousands of underused cards to reduce their exposure. It is estimated that if five of these bond issues fail in a row, the cc companies are bust.

No credit or debit cards for anyone. The millions of people who “live a month ahead” on credit are instantly unable to pay rent or buy groceries. Just one example.

A second is both that the law has been changed so that banks, on their own, can declare a bank holiday for up to two weeks, even for demand accounts. During the depression, some government ordered bank holidays lasted from 3 to 300 days. You could have a million dollars in the bank and you couldn’t get to it, withdraw it, or use bank checks.

Add to this in the last few weeks a shocking federal court decision that if a financial institution used your money for collateral to get themselves a loan, then lost that loan money, the first call on *your* money (or its FDIC replacement) is the other bank that gave them that loan. And you have no recourse, because you just became another of your bank’s creditors. In line behind that other bank.

But the simplest way virtual money becomes worthless is that retailers just decide to refuse to accept it. No checks, credit or debit, only cash. Because only physical money is legal tender. They *must* take it in exchange for debts, so they can insist on it. Virtual money is not legal tender, and that’s all the difference in the world.

The bottom line is that the only money you can trust, you own physically, where no one else can get their grubby hands on it. It is also very fungible, so you can use it quickly if inflation does happen.

The home safe business is booming right now.

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