Using the same currency without a common fiscal policy and resources is a disaster. It means currency and interests rates cannot be tuned to each country's economy. It means governments cannot borrow in their own currency (which is cheapest). There is a reason almost all countries have their own currency.

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.

Couldn't agree more. Greece is a great example of what happens to a country when they have a sovereign debt crisis and no control over the value of their currency.

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.

Greece showed the flaws with the EU.

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.

> The good thing is that the EU has improved since then

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.

Greece cheated their way into EUR. They didn't meet the requirements, so they cooked the numbers with the help of GS. This later on blew up into everybody's faces (well, everyone except GS's).

> disaster

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.

You’ve offered zero counter points to OPs claims though.

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.

The overwhelming counterpoint that I'm making is that it's not a disaster and hasn't been one, now for 25 years. It's been an overwhelming success by any measure.

Where's the evidence of disaster?

Since the financial crisis the US economy has kept on trucking, while the EU has stagnated. This isn’t all because of the euro, but it’s definitely a disaster and I think it is reasonable to hold the euro at least partially responsible.

The US has much higher debt than any point in history, which is climbing rapidly, and are manipulating things as much as possible.

I wouldn’t hold them up as a shining example of “good” or “we should do the same”.

Take a long term view the US has done a lot better in the period it has had a common currency than the EU has done in the period it has had a common currency.

Even in recent decades the US has done much better economically than the EU.

The EU economy is a disaster? Unless we redefine 'economic disaster' to meaninglessness, I think you don't have ground to stand on.

Being the slowest growing major economy is hardly success.

The Euro crisis was a disaster for multiple countries.

'Slowest growing' is hardly disaster! 2008 was pretty bad for a few countries.

Why are you comparing EU against an economy that also has a common currency that cannot be manipulated by member states?

Because the US is structured in a way that makes a common currency workable. It has direct federal taxes, and a very large federal budget. The EU budget is a tiny fraction of total EU public spending.

There is a huge difference between EU states and US states.

> 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.

You are missing the point. The problem is not that transactions work, the problems are with interest rates and government borrowing.

Meanwhile the strongest federation on Earth somehow manages without allowing Texas and Wyoming their own dollars and currency manipuliation. Funny that.

That is exactly my point. The US has a very large federal budget, federal taxes, direct federal spending and federal national debt. To make the Euro work the EU needs to emulate that.

Ah, on that we agree then :)

Technically, the whole country could just switch to Euros without even being in the EU.

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).

Denmark is also in ERM II and 1 EUR ~ 7.46 DKK with a very tight band https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Exchange_Rate_Mechani...

I wonder why they pegged at 1.96 instead of 2?

They had pegged their currency to the DM (Deutsche Mark) and 1.95583:1 is still exactly the same exchange rate as when DM were converted to Euro.

> 1 EUR = 1.95583 BAM/BGN, so just multiply/divide by 2

Why didn't they just set the peg to 2?

Likely to make it simple for retailers to accept euro. Making it exactly two means the retailers would lose money on the exchange spread. Another example is with 1 hkd = 0.97 mop.

That's a proper speculation, not very much grounded in the reality. Also the Euro is not accepted to this day in retail in Bulgaria.

B/c the conversion to Euro happened later. It was already fixed after the hyper inflation in 1997.

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.