[P2P-F] Fw: Is the Euro an Error? Associate! April 2012

Mon Apr 16 14:04:58 CEST 2012

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Subject: Is the Euro an Error? Associate! April 2012

 Associative Economics: Is the Euro an Error? Associate! April 2012  
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Is the Euro an Error? Associate! April 2012
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In this issue of Associate! we consider the problems facing the eurozone, meaning the 17 countries that have adopted the euro as a shared currency and sole legal tender. This is a hugely complicated topic, so we concentrate on one aspect, albeit one that goes to the heart of the problem: Is the euro a political or an economic currency? We lead with two incisive comments by Anthony Coughlan and Tim Congdon on this matter, chosen to emphasise the question of the euro’s economic credentials.

Sign of our Time has two elements. The first is a quotation fromRichard Cobden, an early proponent of inter-country economic cooperation through free trade, but not the strident sort it has now become. On Cobden’s death in 1865, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Drouyn de Lhuys, said: “He is above all in our eyes the representative of sentiments and those cosmopolitan principles before which national frontiers and rivalries disappear; whilst essentially of his country, he was still more of his time, an international man.” The second, by Giscard d’Estaing on the ecu (now euro) as a parallel currency, shows that even a staunch advocate of political union can see the merit of economic cooperation and the possibility of a currency serving economic cohesion without the need for amalgamated sovereignty.

In the feature, Optimising the Euro, we consider what it means for the euro to be an economic currency. We do so by reference first to Keynes’s (1940) image of the sterling area pound and the conceptually related proposal for an International Clearing Union. We then examine the idea of an optimal currency area by reviewing a seminal article by Robert Mundell in the light of associative economics.

AEX Pages mainly concerns book reviews this time. Accounting Corner looks at how people create, value and give meaning to money.
A__2012_Apr_P1.pdf    

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