Free Republic

The European Central Bank (ECB) said on Monday that it plans to give euro banknotes a new look, with the general public in the 19-member eurozone to be asked for its input on the redesign. The euro was introduced in cash form in 2002. The banknotes currently feature windows, doorways and bridges of a generic character from different epochs, with no specific locations represented. […] A decision on the new designs is expected in 2024, the ECB said. The current banknotes do not feature depictions of people, but it is unclear whether that will remain the case. The ECB has...

Less than a hundred days before the European Parliament elections, French citizens are less and less attracted by the EU project, according to the latest opinion polls, with a quarter now in favor of quitting the eurozone and reintroducing the franc, EurActiv France reports. 42% of surveyed French citizens think that the country’s EU membership is a good thing, a six-point decrease compared to April 2012, according to the survey by OpinionWay for TV news channel LCI and Le Figaro newspaper. […] Another fundamental EU policy, the free movement of persons, is also increasingly disliked by the French. A survey...

Despite receiving fulsome praise from a series of EU leaders for their six month stint holding the EU’s rotating presidency, the Irish government finished the job on a sour note. A series of taped conversations between executives at the now defunct Anglo-Irish bank gleefully discussing how they put the Irish government (not to mention the rest of Europe) on the hook for their losses cast a shadow over their last week in the limelight. … German intransigence on banking union comes down to a similar rationale to that used by Berlin during the debt crisis—rules to wind down banks must...

Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl—the architect of German reunification—admitted he would never have won a referendum on the adoption of the euro in his country and said he acted “like a dictator” to see the common currency introduced. … Germany’s chancellor between 1982 and 1998, Kohl said it took him “years” to build the trust and negotiation skills to convince other European leaders of his ideas and push them through. … In addition, the freshly reunified East Germans, happy to finally have their Deutsche Mark back, would never have voted in favor of abandoning it again for a new European...

The euro hit an 11-month high against the dollar after the European Central Bank said that banks were expected to pay back emergency loans faster than expected, increasing confidence that Europe’s debt crisis is easing. … The euro rose as high as $1.3479, the highest since Feb. 2012. The euro was worth $1.3371 late Thursday. …

Germany’s Angela Merkel and other center-right leaders have indicated they would like to see Mario Monti to keep on running Italy instead of Silvio Berlusconi. The center-right leaders—as well as the two Italian political adversaries—met in Brussels ahead of an EU summit on Thursday (13 December) in an event designed to prevent Italy’s political turmoil from stirring up the euro crisis once again. The center-right European People’s Party (EPP) chief Hans Martens admitted to journalists he stage-managed the whole thing so that neither Monti nor Berlusconi knew the other would be there until the last minute to make sure that...

The eurozone is officially back in recession after three years of sluggish growth as the sovereign debt crisis continues to impede recovery. Figures out today (15 November) show that gross domestic product in the 17-country eurozone decreased by 0.1% between July and September after contracting by 0.2% in the three months before that. …

The European Union could be destroyed by the "nightmare" euro crisis, and Germany needs to take the responsibility to save the common currency, billionaire fund manager George Soros said on Monday Soros, who made his mark as an investor on a big bet against the British pound in 1992, said the other alternative is for Germany—the eurozone's biggest economy—to simply leave the 17-member currency bloc. … Germany should act as the leader of the union in the same that the United States did for the free world after World War Two, Soros said at a luncheon hosted by the National...

Blueprints for a European banking union to be published on Wednesday (12 September) will trigger fevered debate over the powers of the European Central Bank (ECB), if a draft leaked late last week remains unchanged. The draft proposal gives the ECB sweeping powers to carry out spot checks and withdraw banking licenses, previously the preserve of national supervisors. The ECB would assume its new duties on 1 July 2013, the paper says, taking sole authority at the beginning of 2014. The proposals—which still face months of negotiation between governments and the European Parliament—give the ECB the power “to authorize credit...

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso has joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel in believing that the eurozone crisis could not be overcome without a treaty change to transfer national competences—such as budgets—to European institutions. Speaking to senior EU diplomats yesterday (4 September), Barroso argued that there was a need for “further political and institutional integration” and a consolidation of “a truly political union” through a change of the EU treaty. … Together with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, Eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker and ECB President Mario Draghi, Barroso is expected to produce a concrete proposal at the 18-19 October...

Prime Minister David Cameron will promise on Thursday to do whatever is needed to protect Britain's economy and banks from a breakup of the eurozone, and will urge leaders of the single currency bloc to "sort out its problems". Cameron's remarks, in a speech to business leaders in northwest England, are likely to irritate European leaders trying to keep the eurozone intact as Greece prepares for a new election and struggles to cope with its debt crisis. Britain's Conservative-led coalition has long blamed its own economic woes on the turbulence in Europe, its main trading partner, though critics say Cameron's...

… Documents from the Kohl administration, kept confidential until now, indicate that the euro's founding fathers were well aware of its deficits. And that they pushed ahead with the project regardless. In response to a request by Spiegel, the German government has, for the first time, released hundreds of pages of documents from 1994 to 1998 on the introduction of the euro and the inclusion of Italy in the eurozone. They include reports from the German embassy in Rome, internal government memos and letters, and hand-written minutes of the chancellor's meetings. The documents prove what was only assumed until now:...

The situation in the eurozone has become so bleak that it is giving rise to the most improbable rumors. The latest to make the rounds of European hedge fund managers suggests that the euro will be tied to the dollar at close to parity, a dramatic fall from its current level of just under $1.30 and one that would involve the printing of hundreds of billions of euros. However unlikely, the speculation is an indication of Europe’s plight in a world with little growth and every government looking at exports as a way to grow. A cheap currency giving an...

European Central Bank (ECB) chief Mario Draghi has urged eurozone leaders to come up with a 10-year target for the common currency, saying they should accept more transfer of powers if they truly want a fiscal union. Held exceptionally in Barcelona instead of the ECB headquarters in Frankfurt, the monthly meeting of eurozone's central bank governing council on Thursday (3 May) was an opportunity for Draghi to explain what he meant last week when he said a "growth compact" is needed along with the deficit-cutting measures taken by most governments. "There is absolutely no contradiction between a growth compact and...

Nearly 10 years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld provoked outrage by referring to "Old Europe." How dare he, snapped the French and Germans, call us "old" when the utopian European Union was all the rage, the new euro was soaring in value, and the United States was increasingly isolated under the Bush administration! Yet the more things change in Europe, the more they stay the same. The island of Britain usually is, and is not, a part of Europe -- carefully pulling out when things heat up, terrified that it will be pulled back in when things boil over....

Europeans are blaming financial transactions arranged by Wall Street for bringing Greece to the brink of needing a bailout. But a close look at the country's finances over the nearly 10 years since it adopted the euro shows not only that Greece was the principal author of its debt problems, but also that fellow European governments repeatedly turned a blind eye to its flouting of rules. Though the European Commission and the U.S. Federal Reserve are examining a controversial 2001 swap arranged with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Greece's own budget moves, in clear breach of European Union rules, dwarfed the...

The biggest chatter in the markets today is about the article in the Financial Times that talks about the shifting of central bank reserve positions from dollars to euros. This is something that we have warned about for some time now in previous editions of Daily Fundamentals as well as in our 2005 currency outlook. Russia has already announced their intentions to shift their mix of reserve allocations. The central banks of oil exporters in the Middle East have also reduced their dollar holdings over the past 3 years. According to the report, 90 percent of central bank portfolio...

"Thanks a billion!" reads a banner hanging at the entrance to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The message was posted last month when the number of trades handled by the CME's Globex electronic trading system, which was launched 12 years ago, surpassed 1bn. A less advertised - but more telling - statistic is the speed with which the CME's flagship Eurodollar contracts have shifted from "open outcry" trading to Globex. In January, when the CME launched an effort to "migrate" Eurodollar trading from its trading pits to the computer, only 9.6 per cent of Eurodollar contracts were traded on Globex....