Why America does not anticipate euro collapse

Why America does not anticipate euro collapse

This Euro-Thing’s gonna work.

Really, dude.

WASHINGTON, July 23 – Germany’s had quite a busy month what with all the bullying and stomping of boots on Greece this July. The whole Grexit thriller sure turned our attention to the cliff hanger saga of a country on the brink of disaster.

German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble he wants all his euros returned from Athens. Billions and billions of euros.

Wolfgang best gather his euros up quickly. This morning’s front page of the Berlin daily Die Welt they are saying America is seeing the euro collapse in sight.

Here’s the headline on the Die Welt lead story:

Warum Amerika mit dem Untergang des Euro rechnet

Why America sees the euro collapse

To draw readers into the story Die Welt pulls out a terrific photo of Andrea Mitchell’s husband back in the day when he ran the Federal Reserve.

Then Die Welt plugs Alan Greenspan into the google search engine and undercovers his two word description of Europe’s monetary union as this: euro thing. What follows is something about Anglo-Saxon economists.

This guy up at the Harvard Business School – a Martin Feldstein – must be one of those Anglo-Saxon economists. Except his name doesn’t sound so much Anglo-Saxon. Anyway, Die Welt found out back in 1997 he wrote a thesis on: “Introduction of a common currency could provoke armed conflicts within the euro zone.”

We’re thinking here Poland takes on Portugal.

Oh, wait. That’s football.

Martin warned us back in the 20th century that because the euro has “Different mentalities in dealing with inflation and unemployment as well as differences on appropriate economic policy would have to wake up in the long term quite the force, old historical animosities.”

Try running that Thesis Statement by University of Wisconsin Business School faculty for your Ph.D. qualifier.

Euro only a fair weather currency?

Milton Friedman he got one of those Nobel Prizes back in 1976. Apparently he was one of the most influential economists in the 20th century and Milton’s euro forecast was as pessimistic about euro’s future as Martin when he said:

“Sooner or later, when the world economy gets a real damper that internal problems are the Euro tear”, so his judgment.”

Another guy got one of those Nobel Prizes is Paul Krugman. They use him all the time on the New York Times op ed page. He’s a more recent big time name in economics than Milton and Martin. And Die Welt goes through his blog on the internet and he says: “Without a meaningful economic framework, the project can not work.”

Euro promoted economic disaster?

What Die Welt dishes up next is lots of cool charts. We didn’t really study the bells and whistles on the charts but if we were back in Econ 696 we’d copy paste them into the six weeks take home.

Here’s one:

D-Mark Strong currency – lira weak currency

And another:

Transfer Union or Euro-end

Photo: Infographics WorldThe transfers in the euro zone are less than those between US states

Die Welt goes to the Chrome browser, googles the KEYWORDS: Wolfgang Schäuble Noble Prize Euro Collapse Famous Economists 20th Century Alan Greenspan. Spins them around the word processor a bit. And then tacks on the stuff about America figuring its Doomsday for the Euro.

Right. Up there in Harvard and on the New York subway this morning everyone in America’s talking:

Told ya so. Euro Collapse! We Americans were right about this euro-thing from the get-go!

Euro only a fair weather currency?

Here’s one:

D-Mark Strong currency – lira weak currency

Transfer Union or Euro-end

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