Using the same currency makes it easier to figure out what you’re paying and spot if you’re getting ripped off on holidays.
For example: €100 EUR = 41,172.31 HUF (Hungarian Forint)
For example: €100 EUR = 41,172.31 HUF (Hungarian Forint)
The hope was that the single currency would be soon followed by political union. Without this the Euro has been a disaster, leading to the European debt crisis, and painful austerity as the price of bailout.
The ability to control your overnight bank rates, and your monetary supply is important. I don't think the convenience of easy travel or easy(ier) trading of goods outweighs it at all.
The good thing is that the EU has improved since then.
On the flip side, Greece is also a great example of how powerful the EU can be. Greece would have absolutely collapsed outside the EU.
So even with the limitations on the EU, Greece did a lot better within the EU than it would have outside.
It was indeed a big backdoor attack to the Euro, exploited by GS [1], at least.
> Greece would have absolutely collapsed outside the EU.
Meat for the IMF, BlackRock and so on; Argentina's twin.
Global economy seems to be an ocean with Orca whales, they hit and eat alongside with sharks. The citizens turns to meat at same moment their politicians betray them [2], whether caused by ignorance or by malice (corruption).
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/feb/25/markets-pre...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2010/apr/18/goldman-sac... ( Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – it was a con )
PS: I wonder what happened to the perpetrators of the 2008 crisis.
By your theory, and by the endless claims of the anti-EU crowd, but it hasn't been. People use euros with no problem, every day, for transactions large and small. It's a major international currency, maybe second only to the dollar.
Every time I travel abroad, I transact in local currencies for transactions large and small all over the world using real-time currency exchange rates via the magic of the Visa/Mastercard network.
If that was the core thing the Euro was supposed to solve, the better solution today is just an EU wide digital payments standard.
The point still stands, a common currency without the ultimate unification part is just disadvantageous for most.
Where's the evidence of disaster?
I wouldn’t hold them up as a shining example of “good” or “we should do the same”.
Even in recent decades the US has done much better economically than the EU.
The Euro crisis was a disaster for multiple countries.
There is a huge difference between EU states and US states.
You are missing the point. The problem is not that transactions work, the problems are with interest rates and government borrowing.
Granted, the only two countries to do so (Montenegro and Kosovo) never bothered with creating their own currency to begin with, they went straight to Euros post-independence (with some disgruntlement from the EU). And then there's also two (Bulgaria and Bosnia) which are technically not using Euros, but their currencies are pegged to Euros and stupidly simple to convert (1 EUR = 1.95583 BAM/BGN, so just multiply/divide by 2).
Why didn't they just set the peg to 2?
The initital rate was 1000 levs = 1 DM, in 1999 there was a denomination of 1000 : 1, same year the Euro happened and the Deutsche mark enjoyed the same rate to the Euro.