The euro should be ended. You can’t saddle such disparate economies like Germany and Greece with the same currency and expect it to work out. Irrational.
The European Commission’s top economists warned the politicians in the 1990s that the euro might not survive a crisis, at least in its current form. There is no EU treasury or debt union to back it up. The one-size-fits-all regime of interest rates caters badly to the different needs of Club Med and the German bloc.Think that they got what they wanted? or are they going to precipitate something worse to reach their undue goal?
The euro fathers did not dispute this. But they saw EMU as an instrument to force the pace of political union. They welcomed the idea of a “beneficial crisis”. As ex-Commission chief Romano Prodi remarked, it would allow Brussels to break taboos and accelerate the move to a full-fledged EU economic government. …
I was around for a number of years in Germany....BEFORE the Euro arrived. Everyone whined (Germans were minor, but Americans in Germany were louder about this).
If you had any plans for the weekend where it meant you had to cross some border (France, Austria, Lux, Belgium, Netherlands)...then it meant visiting a local bank and ordering your currency. If you lived next to France....they generally had a bit on hand but you were typically limited to $400 worth of Francs or you had to make the order and wait three days for thousand or two thousand dollars worth. It was a three-star hassle, meaning two visits to the local bank and waiting in line to get what you ordered.
Finished with the trip but you still got a hundred bucks of Francs on you? Well....you only had three options. Save it for the next trip, which might be a year away. Or you could exchange at the border and get a loss on your money. Or you went back to the bank to exchange it. Note, the banks didn’t take the coins. Today, I still have around eight different currency collections of coins from prior to the Euro era. Worthless for the most part, but still about 100 dollars worth.
In the five years prior to the Euro....everyone from industry, the banking sector, commerce, and tourist groups were literally begging for the Euro. Didn’t matter what country it was....they all knew that a common currency was the only way to go.
The mistake made here....there should have been only six nations in the original group (France, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Lux, Belgium). There should have been a ten-year delay for any further members. There should have been a insider audit and an outsider audit of any nation applying to be a member. Countries with naturally corrupt finances (Cyprus, Greece, Italy for example)....should have been kept out and never admitted. The original six countries would have had a period to mature and develop stability.
At present, it’s hard to say what will happen. If Germany leaves the Euro (it is possible in the scenarios)...then I think the Euro collapses within two years. German national elections are in the fall of 2017. Presently, there are only three national topics for the election: immigration, crime, and Greece/Euro. It might be an interesting election to watch.