{"id":9284,"date":"2015-06-21T07:12:34","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T12:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9284"},"modified":"2015-06-21T07:12:56","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T12:12:56","slug":"the-euro-was-doomed-from-the-start-and-still-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9284","title":{"rendered":"The Euro Was Doomed From The Start\u2014\u2013And Still Is"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Euro Was Doomed From The Start\u2014\u2013And Still Is<\/a><\/h3>\n

Next week will be a momentous one for Europe, with a string of crucial meetings including the summit at which the PM will table his renegotiation demands. We may be focused on our renegotiation\u00a0but it is Greece which will dominate<\/u><\/a>. For some time it has looked as though the\u00a0Greek drama must reach its final denouement<\/u><\/a>. But the Greeks have become highly skilled at managing to push back deadlines ever further into the future. Whether Greece leaves the euro or stays in, a decision surely cannot be delayed much longer. So what will this mean for the EU?<\/p>\n

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I had the privilege of negotiating Britain\u2019s opt-out from the then new European single currency in 1991. My abiding memory is how clear it was that the euro had nothing to do with economics and was a political project with a dubious rationale. Some representatives of other countries were openly sceptical, but their political masters were firmly in control.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The creation of the euro\u00a0has been an error of historic dimensions and done great harm to the EU<\/u><\/a>, which in its first 40 years had brought economic prosperity to the citizens of the Continent. Then the less well-off countries benefited from the lowering of tariffs and the increase in internal trade. After the creation of the euro, however, economic growth slowed markedly. Poorer countries fared worse than the more prosperous countries, like Germany, which benefited from the new, weaker currency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Greek crisis epitomises the complete mess that Europe has made of the single currency. Greece should never have been admitted in the first place, though it was not the only country \u2013 Belgium and Italy were two others \u2013 that didn\u2019t meet the strict criteria for membership. From the beginning, the rules put in place for the euro, relating to bail-outs, monetary financing and deficit levels, have been ignored. Europe claims to be a rule-based organisation. But however else the eurozone is run, it is not run strictly according to its own rules.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Euro Was Doomed From The Start\u2014\u2013And Still Is Next week will be a momentous one for Europe, with a string of crucial meetings including the summit at which the PM will table his renegotiation demands. We may be focused on our renegotiation\u00a0but it is Greece which will dominate. For some time it has looked […]<\/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":[93,5979,2120,2467,279,280,281,2246,284,1167,2598,6560],"class_list":["post-9284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-britain","tag-contracorner","tag-david-stockman","tag-emu","tag-eu","tag-euro","tag-europe","tag-european-monetary-union","tag-european-union","tag-greece","tag-grexit","tag-norman-lamont"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9284","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=9284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9285,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9284\/revisions\/9285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}