Outlook for the Euro

An article in the Irish Daily Mail placed on the blog of Mary Ellen Synon in the Daily Mail makes very interesting reading and it is linked here and I quote below its closing paragraphs:

‘The blindness to these risks in Berlin, Frankfurt, Brussels and The Hague means that the viability of the euro itself will remain in question over the medium term. It has only survived so well for ten years because its first major test arose from excessive post-reunification German costs: the German élite has never hesitated to put the interests of European unification ahead of the welfare of the German people.’

‘Now that the long-term sufferers from the absurd imbalances of the EMU system are to be Italians, Greeks, and Spaniards, with unemployment rising to levels reminiscent of the 1980s and early 1990s, when inflation was being expunged, it seems unlikely either that Italy, in particular, will continue to wish to be in EMU, or that Germany will want to pay the ever-mounting cost of keeping Club Med in it.’

‘Whether the Euro system will survive is an open question. What is clearer is that the performance of its member economies is poor in any case, and made significantly worse by membership of EMU.’

Deteriorating industrial relations in France are covered in The Times which is also an item worth reading this morning, linked here.