{"id":5577,"date":"2015-02-11T07:43:59","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T12:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5577"},"modified":"2015-02-11T07:43:59","modified_gmt":"2015-02-11T12:43:59","slug":"keeping-greece-in-the-eurozone-is-worth-the-pain-don-pittis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5577","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Greece in the eurozone is worth the pain: Don Pittis"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"story-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/keeping-greece-in-the-eurozone-is-worth-the-pain-don-pittis-1.2952030\" target=\"_blank\">Keeping Greece in the eurozone is worth the pain: Don Pittis<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>To misquote Mao\u00a0Zedong, creating a single currency is not a tea party. Despite former U.S. central banker Alan Greenspan&#8217;s disparaging comments about the future of the euro, Americans had far worse problems creating a single currency.<\/p>\n<p>The question facing the Europeans as they hammer out a deal with Greece is whether the long-term advantages of\u00a0the euro outweigh the pain of the current ructions. If the American experience is any guide, it\u00a0is\u00a0worth it.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/joe-oliver-urges-eu-to-compromise-on-greek-debt-1.2950363\">Joe Oliver urges compromise on Greek debt<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/business\/why-europe-fears-a-grexit-more-than-a-new-bailout-1.2931768\">Why Europe fears a Grexit<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Greenspan has\u00a0been widely quoted as predicting the collapse of the eurozone, led by the forced exit of Greece. In the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/p02jkn9f\">interview on the BBC<\/a>, however, Greenspan did not specifically link the two, as in cause and effect.<\/p>\n<p>But he did say that, in the long term, the European currency union is untenable.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There is no way I can conceive of the euro continuing unless and until all of the members of the eurozone become politically integrated,&#8221; Greenspan told the BBC&#8217;s Mark Mardell.<\/p>\n<p>What Greenspan conveniently seemed to forget is that for Americans (and even Canadians), settling on\u00a0a single unit of payment\u00a0was a long and painful process. It costs money. And if U.S. history is any guide,\u00a0it does not depend on perfect political integration.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Keeping Greece in the eurozone is worth the pain: Don Pittis To misquote Mao\u00a0Zedong, creating a single currency is not a tea party. Despite former U.S. central banker Alan Greenspan&#8217;s disparaging comments about the future of the euro, Americans had far worse problems creating a single currency. The question facing the Europeans as they hammer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[124,279,284,1167,3444],"class_list":["post-5577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-central-banks","tag-eu","tag-european-union","tag-greece","tag-monetary-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5578,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5577\/revisions\/5578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}