"The truth is that lack of fiscal discipline isn't the whole, or even the main, source of Europe's trouble - not even in Greece, whose government was indeed irresponsible. No, the real story behind the euromess lies not in the profligacy of politicians but in the arrogance of elites - specifically, the policy elites who pushed Europe into adopting a single currency well before the continent was ready for such an experiment."
Paul Krugman
It is not the arrogance, but the sweet-tempered simplemindedness which pushed men like Helmut Schmidt and Giscard D'Estain to believe that it could be possible to make converge people of very different places, from Sicily and Turkey to Sweden and Finland, with such an initialization. And they were acting in front of an immense (often marxist or paramarxist) crowd continuously shouting: "Money makes the world go round!", continuously evoking money as more important issue than anything else (laws, rights, working culture, ideologies, mentalities, know how transfer, consense, experience with good amministration, absence of such good experiences...etc.etc.).
ReplyDeleteYet one had to start somewhere! Somewhere with something incisive and strongly symbolic. But one has underestimated the difficulties, and one has decided to grow too big too fast.
If Europe did not adopt the single currency, Paul Krugman today would cleverly had individuated another crucial error. You betcha! Unfortunatly we experience a time, where the world every day is more difficult to govern and even the best decisions lead to big undesired side effects as well, not to mention the bad decisions.
Let´s make a summary of minutes spending at airports and other border stations, before the fabulous year 2000, in order to make a change, not in behaviour or opinion, but only in currency. Than add to these private inconveniences all the difficulties and hardships in commercial trade, that aren´t only waste of time but in particular costs for uncertainty and risk of exchange rate.
ReplyDeleteThe so called Euromess storm in the Meditarrenean sank one little vessel loaded with coke (see FAZ 17th feb, 2010, page N3), but we have been winning an armada of precious goods due to the Euro.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sinn30/English
ReplyDeleteHow can one controll faked statistics staged by autonomous governments?