The Euro on it's deathbed ?

Daniel Hannan is one of the very few UK politicians voicing that they fear for the Euro collapsing sooner than later.

As my Biblical namesake put it in not dissimilar circs: God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.'



For the better part of a decade, bearded survivalists holed up in places like Idaho have been telling us that paper money is finished, and that we should buy precious metals, while sophisticated economics graduates who write for the FT have been insisting that gold is massively over-valued. It turns out that, if you'd listened to the snaggle-toothed mountain men, you'd have made a packet. Yet again, the 'experts' got it dismally wrong..........

And, what would happen if the Euro collapses? Andrew Lilico is an Economist with Europe Economics. The entire idea of several countries having one common currency was lunacy from the start and I am somewhat surprised that the Euro has been breathing as long as it has. Bad ideas need to die off or be killed off. The consequences will be dire as detailed in Lilico's article below, but IMO, the demise of the Euro is inevitable.

Many statements from senior eurozone policymakers treat the continuation of the euro and continuation of the European Union as much the same thing. Some of those commenting upon these events dispute that. They point out that the Single Market was there before the euro. They imagine that schemes in which Germany and few other countries form an "Eastern euro" whilst France leads a "Western euro" would be compatible with the continuation of the Single Market.

They are wrong. And it is actually the fact that eurozone breakup (by which I mean any arrangement in which any of France, Germany and Italy ceases to be in a currency union with the others – Greece's quasi-inevitable exit from the euro would not be what I mean by "eurozone breakup") would very probably lead to collapse of the EU that generates most of the costs of that catastophe scenario, rather than the costs of breaking up the euro itself. It is a grave mistake to imagine that just because the Single Market existed before the euro (and could surely have continued for some considerable time if the euro had never happened) it therefore follows that the Single Market could continue if the euro were to break up........