July 31st was Milton Friedman’s 100th birthday, and his birthday
present is to watch the ‘European Project’ come crashing to the ground,
just as he predicted that it would. I doubt that it gives him any
pleasure. In fact, Friedman told Robert Mundell (the ‘Father of the
Euro’) that since the experiment had already been entered into, he hoped
that he would turn out to be wrong. But he hasn’t been.
The discussion between these two brilliant men was sponsored by The Institute for Research on Public Policy in May of 2001. If you have the time, read it over. You’ll end up knowing more about currency economics than anybody has a right to, and you’ll learn more than anybody in any position of power in international finance knows about things like currency unions and fixed and flexible and pegged and unpegged (and gradations between) exchange rates . But the real clash was between the genius who thought up the Euro and the genius who was skeptical of it.
Friedman nailed it right at the beginning:
Mundell argued that the Euro and similar schemes which he hoped would be imitated around the world were worth it because they would lead to a higher standard of living:
The discussion between these two brilliant men was sponsored by The Institute for Research on Public Policy in May of 2001. If you have the time, read it over. You’ll end up knowing more about currency economics than anybody has a right to, and you’ll learn more than anybody in any position of power in international finance knows about things like currency unions and fixed and flexible and pegged and unpegged (and gradations between) exchange rates . But the real clash was between the genius who thought up the Euro and the genius who was skeptical of it.
Friedman nailed it right at the beginning:
In other words, when the accountability for creating money is separated from the accountability for spending money, chaos results.“There is no historical precedent for such an arrangement. It involves each country’s giving up power over its internal monetary policy to an entity not under its political control. Such a system has economic advantages and disadvantages, but I believe that its real Achilles heel will prove to be political; that a system under which the political and currency boundaries do not match is bound to prove unstable.”
Mundell argued that the Euro and similar schemes which he hoped would be imitated around the world were worth it because they would lead to a higher standard of living:
But Friedman argued that, in fact, the Euro would not be economically successful because Europe lacked“Countries with a unified currency system trade a great deal more with one another and are able to exploit the gains from trade and therefore have a higher standard of living.”





Επειδή
έχουμε φτάσει στο σημείο, όπου θα πρέπει να δίνονται απαντήσεις και για
τα πλέον αυτονόητα, κι επειδή η προπαγάνδα όταν μένει αναπάντητη,
ισχυροποιείται στον μέσο νου ως η απόλυτη αλήθεια, καλό θα είναι να
δοθεί ένα τέλος σ’ αυτόν τον στείρο «αντιαρχαιοελληνισμό» (το άλλο άκρο
της προγονολατρείας) που έρπει, καιρό τώρα στα διάφορα μονοπάτια του
διαδικτύου και όχι μόνο.
Την
ώρα που κάποιοι ανόητοι της “Αριστεράς και της Προόδου” το παίζουν
“αντιρατσιστές” ο Ελληνικός λαός πληρώνει τις “μαύρες τρύπες” του
Συστήματος Υγείας – Παράνομοι και ανασφάλιστοι αλλοδαποί λεηλατούν τα
νοσοκομεία – Παρακατιανοί οι Έλληνες ασθενείς.