The future of the Euro and EU.

Bring back the Lira!!!

All adopt the pound, simples

If Greece were to go back to the drachma their problems would be over in 24hrs

There used to be a thing called the Latin Monetary Union from about 1865 until the mid 1920s. The currencies although different were supposed to be pegged against each other but even then various countries debased their currencies, Greece was booted out of it in 1908 and the French ignored most of the regulations behind it.
That should have told us that the idea of a common currency was fraught with danger.

Basically I think that the EU generally was created to try to stop European countries from hacking each other to pieces the way that they'd done for centuries previous. A common currency I suppose is a noble idea, but was always doomed to fail wasn't it?
Really I think that the only proper common currency was the system of Denarii and Aurii across the Roman Empire but even that didn't work properly.

Maybe the only other time that a common currency worked was in 1486 under the reign of Richard the Fourth when the egg replaced the worm as the lowest form of currency.

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Originally Posted by Bolton Midnight

If Greece were to go back to the drachma their problems would be over in 24hrs

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If anyone from the ECB is reading this, all your problems are over.

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Originally Posted by Rollo

Basically I think that the EU generally was created to try to stop European countries from hacking each other to pieces the way that they'd done for centuries previous. A common currency I suppose is a noble idea, but was always doomed to fail wasn't it?

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But, as stated before, I find the idea of its failure unimaginable in practical terms as well as politically. It is more likely, surely, that some nations will leave.

I'm kind of hoping it leads to some uniform practices in each Euro country so individual nations don't make the mistakes Greece, Ireland, Spain and so on made. Proper regulation and oversight should be preventing the causes of these problems. The Euro (and the EU in general) is supposed to bind all of the countries closer together, after all.

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Originally Posted by Knock-on

Is nobody else concerned by this?

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Concerned? Yes. Understanding the full implications of it? No

To some extent the crisis seems driven by "market confidence" (lack of) and again politicians are trying (and failing) to react. At the moment the "financial markets" seem to have a grip on determining our future and that's not healthy for Europe or anywhere else.

As for the UK's role...why the rest of Europe doesn't tell us to get stuffed more often I have no idea. Our commitment to Europe is half-hearted at best, and yet our politicians are quite happy to lecture the rest of Europe.

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Originally Posted by Gregor-y

Proper regulation and oversight should be preventing the causes of these problems.

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I work in a multi-layered and highly bureaucratized system. When I hear "regulation and oversight" I know from experience and by instinct the system is falling apart and tightening the screws is only going to postpone its crash. If you want to resolve the systemic issues, you need to change the way the elements of the system function. In a human society (I suspect EU is a human society of sorts) that means changing attitudes and behaviors of people on all levels from irresponsible consumers to power-hungry politicians to greedy bankers. And this is the difficult part.

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Originally Posted by Rudy Tamasz

I work in a multi-layered and highly bureaucratized system. When I hear "regulation and oversight" I know from experience and by instinct the system is falling apart and tightening the screws is only going to postpone its crash. If you want to resolve the systemic issues, you need to change the way the elements of the system function. In a human society (I suspect EU is a human society of sorts) that means changing attitudes and behaviors of people on all levels from irresponsible consumers to power-hungry politicians to greedy bankers. And this is the difficult part.

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In the case of the last of the three segments you mention, the greedy bankers, self-regulation has surely been proven to have failed in the crises of recent years.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

In the case of the last of the three segments you mention, the greedy bankers, self-regulation has surely been proven to have failed in the crises of recent years.

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You could say the same about the Euro. It had checks on borrowing and interest in place that would have helped prevent the mess it's in now but these were ignored by the member states who flounted them. No wonder the southern europeans did the same.

The UK banks did have checks in place (don't know about the Euro ones) but these were dissolved by Gordon Brown who removed the safeguards during his smooze-in with the City. Like a cheap hooker you knew he was going to get screwed and we got left with a STD (stupidity transferred debt).