Via Ft Alphaville:
“The G7 countries are completely asleep at the wheel. I looked at the information they put out from their meeting I was absolutely shocked … they seem to show no awareness at all that much of Europe is facing a serious crisis and it’s not limited to Spain, Greece and Portugal, it’s also going to include Ireland. I think Italy is also very much in the line of fire. There’s a very serious crisis inside the Euro-zone.”
Former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson commenting to the BBC about the Euro-zone crisis on Sunday.
Before the launch of the euro in 1999, Milton Friedman predicted that the Eurozone would not survive its first economic crisis.
He noted that in a world of floating exchange rates, if one country faces a shock, it could simply respond by letting the exchange rate change. But with the arrival of the euro, that option is no longer available.
The euro is going to be a big source of problems, not a source of help. The euro has no precedent. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states. There have been unions based on gold or silver, but not on fiat money—money tempted to inflate—put out by politically independent entities.
- Interview with New Perspectives Quarterly Magazine, 2005
