Den tragikomiska farsen kring motgarantierna för de finska lånegarantierna till Grekland fick mig att från hyllan återuppsöka kritikern av den gemensamma valutan Bernard Connolly, som 1995 gav ut sin bok THE ROTTEN HEART OF EUROPE och 1996 fick sparken från sin tjänst vid den europeiska gemensamma marknadens komission.
Mitt eget ekonomiska omdöme är, känt och erkänt, illa utvecklat. Hade därför stora svårigheter i tiden när jag första gången försökte läsa boken. Vill inte påstå att svårigheterna nämnvärt skulle ha minskat, men hittade följande (något överlånga) avsnitt som jag saxar in här:
”A single currency in Europe would be consistent with integration, economic convergence, with the drawing of full advantage from capital liberalization and with a successful Single Market only if asymmetric real shocks were of minimal importance. For this to happen, the process of levelling-up of productivity and income standards would have had to be completed – for the changes that trigger such levelling-up are themselves asymmetrical real shocks. Even that would not be enough: the whole “economic culture” would have have had to become totally uniform across countries, to rule out future divergence. The relative sizes of the public and private sectors, the degree of government regulation and subsidy, the role of corporate institutions versus free markets, the scope and direction of social security systems, the cast of education – all these would first have had to be “harmonized”. What is more, there would have to be complete certainty that no country in the monetary union could ever move away from this state of conformity in the future. That list of conditions amounts, in effect, to the prior existence of a single government – complete political union.
In short there is no meaningful economic argument for a single currency inEurope – now or ever.
A currency has meaning because it expresses national monetary sovereignity. The circumstances that might make a country want to give up its national monetary sovereignity irrevocably can never have anything rationally to do with economics – though the connection is often falsely made.”