Saying ¥€$ to the euro

[imomus]

Probably the two most positive forward steps I've seen in my lifetime are the arrival of the web and the adoption of the euro. If it's truly incredible that you can now find the answer to pretty much any question by googling, it's also incredible that you can travel from Berlin to Lisbon to Athens and use the same currency. The feeling I get from both the internet and the eurozone is one of freedom and expansiveness. Things that used to be difficult have become easy. Things that used to be expensive have become cheap. Things that used to be separate have become unified. Things that didn't work before do now.

This year -- and this week -- we've seen some bold steps forward for the euro. Countries like Britain, Denmark and Sweden are now thinking seriously about adopting the European currency. Call it the silver lining in the cloud of 2008's great financial meltdown; nations where we eurozoners have had to queue at expensive exchanges and fumble with silly-looking local notes and coins have suddenly seen reversals in public opinion, as people saw the value of their own currencies plummeting. The time has come to say yes to euros.



This week Britain has reached a "pivotal psychological moment": a pound is now worth less than a euro at commercial currency exchanges. As The Observer reports today, "after commission and a handling fee... €18 cost The Observer £19.61, an exchange rate of €0.918 to the pound". It's entirely possible that by the end of the year the official exchange rate will see the euro worth more than the pound.

The Observer says "the Treasury last night refused to comment on sterling's fall and said there was no prospect of entering the euro in the near future. Official rates showed the pound was worth €1.11 yesterday. At its high point against the euro in May 2000, a pound was worth €1.746." However, Gordon Brown "stated in June 2003 that the best exchange rate for the UK to join the single currency would be around 73 pence per euro" -- a value reached a year ago. In 2008 the pound fell 17% against the euro. Today, 73 pence buys you 81 euro cents.

If the UK government is still officially saying no to the euro, many other governments on the fringes of the Euro-zone -- and their citizens -- are positively screaming yes. In some cases the reversals of popular feeling have been rapid and extreme. According to a new poll, 52% of Danes now support dropping the Danish krone for the euro. That's up from 45% in a survey conducted just two weeks before. The Danish prime minister has said that the financial crisis "makes it evident" that Denmark needs to join the euro. This will probably happen in 2011, after a referendum.

The Swedes have rejected euro adoption in the past, but there too opinions have shifted radically in recent months. Last week 44% of Swedes polled in favour of adopting the euro, up from 34.6% in May. Their currency, the kronor, is also plummeting, making it more expensive for Swedes to travel abroad.

Slovakia gets euros next month, Latvia may adopt the currency in 2011, and Czechoslovakia gets it in 2012. Poland should soon follow (they aim to join by 2012). Iceland is now desperate to adopt the euro -- despite not even being a member of the European Union. You can do that; the Vatican and Monaco use euros, but aren't in the EU. Norway is also outside the EU at the moment, and may be influenced by what happens in Iceland. Like the UK, Norway has had North Sea Oil to buffer it from economic hardship in the past. But that won't last forever.

For people like me, who use the euro and who'd like to use it more widely -- and who feel not just positive about the idea of a European superstate, but euro-patriotic about it -- 2008 has been a great year: the year the naysayers began to say ¥€$ to the euro.

Comments

[mcfnord.livejournal.com]

i bought some Friday so cheer louder

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I particularly love the way so much Little-Englander anti-Euro sentiment plays on the importance of retaining our traditional currency -- which was only introduced in 1971. Ah, the irony, it burns ...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm old enough to remember sixpences and ha'pennies and things, and fuck, what a hassle that was! 12 of those make one of these, and 20 of these make one of those, and 21 to the guinea.

Decimalization was a big step forward, and euro-ization will be another.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

A lot of the Eastern European countries were not allowed to enter the monetarian union until they reached a certain economic standard.

I don't know if it's a good idea to let the UK, Iceland and similar adopt the euro now, it may drop.

[aberrantangels]

For people like me, who use the euro and who'd like to use it more widely -- and who feel not just positive about the idea of a European superstate, but euro-patriotic about it

...for a moment, I was tempted to adapt that line for use on people who bleat about the amero: "I feel not just positive about the idea of a North American Union, but amero-patriotic about it." Then I remembered that this would be dignifying their delusions in a way they do not and by mathematical definition cannot deserve.

Srsly, I am a collector of conspiracy theories, some of which even strike me as reasonable explanations for known facts that don't quite fit together. The amero has never struck me as one; it is to me as the absorption of 800 million Hindus into a transnational Islamic Caliphate is to John Rogers — automatic invalidation of anything the speaker has to say, like the investment adviser who suggests "put[ting] your money into the Easter Bunny's Egg Upgrades".

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

This is all a bit silly really. The fact that the £ has changed in value so much against the Euro is evidence that our economy is affected very differently by the global economic cycle, and therefore that joining would be a bad idea, not a good one, because we need different monetary policy, not a joint one!

I'd bet money on Greece or Italy leaving before the UK joins, to be honest, the whole thing's coming apart at the seams in the face of the recession.

[(Anonymous)]

The euro does makes things easier, but its so goddam ugly
What do you mean, fumbling with silly local coins?I love going to a real foreign country where I can see their proud money notes with their kings and cultural superstars, the rich color patterns you dont find in the euro, an engraving of their highest mountain or prettiest temple. Ever since the euro got in town I feel like life has become 0.12% uglier, just like seeing malls and mcdonalds where there used to be shoe repairmen and donkey barns, or like a modern tourist resort on the beach youve been going to all your life. On a purely aesthetical point, of course.
Seriously, dont you see how ugly the goddam things are?

[troytheking.livejournal.com]

Is it really possible in the UK?

[(Anonymous)]

agreed on all points!

Montenegro, upon seperation from Serbia, chose the euro, and it makes much more sense for the ex-Bloc states to take it up as their economies are biased to Germany and Austria due to the patterns of investment from these two countries

For Britain, like Switzerland, we may not "make" much these days, but the intangibles such as banking and creativity that we have a big interest in are much less weathered by foreign exchange than actual physical product

(sorry, btw, Nick: Czechoslovakia... does this mean the Czech Republic, or are you longing for the kind of European Union your Last Communist was after, 1950's style? :)

Happy Sunday, DC

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Not that there aren't entirely real objections.

swedes

[(Anonymous)]

The Swedish kronor is plummeting because the government wants it to in order to kickstart the declining export industry. Unfortunately there are still strong anti EMU forces in the establishment. We won't see the euro in the next 10-15 years at least.

/Märta

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I agree! I can't agree more, actually. But don't you -- a champion, after all, of diversity for the sake of diversity -- feel just a little tingle of regret for all these culturally-specific coins and banknotes of yesteryear, all these pesos and liras and marks that celebrated the traditions, coats-of-arms, kings, and heroes of individual European communities? Francs, as you surely recall, were once a veritable showcase for French writers. Or are we all western enough that transnational gestures like this have ceased to threaten anything of communal value?

But no, for a lot of us the euro was always a fairly unambiguous economic boon right off the bat. The UK may not quite have that luxury, but smaller, trade-reliant countries did. It's not a new project, and it's not always a painless project, but it's an ambitious project, meant to endure. True to form, the euro tries its damndest to be visually sleek, neutral, and transnational.

The look isn'nt everyone's cup of tea, of course, but its designers clearly went for the "science-fiction robot money from the future" angle. I'm personally quite fond of it. It's also a remarkable practical symbol for the EU as a transnational, continent-wide, post-world-war peace project. It could just as well sport the motto "Preventing Another Franco-Prussian, Because Those Didn't Work Out So Well." If, that is, it was the sort of currency that sported mottos.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Ah, the true and tested Nordic tradition of devaluing the currency whenever exports hit a snag.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Kosovo also uses the Euro, much for the same reason as Montenegro. The currency was, of course, arguably hoisted on them by history and by the Bundesbank, but it does seem to work well enough.

[alya.livejournal.com]

It's not Czechoslovakia anymore, it's the Czech Republic! And I'd hate Czech crowns to be replaced by euros - they're so beautiful. Unification is convenient, but it pains me to see the unique flavors and aesthetics of local currencies getting lost in the process.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

If the UK adopts the Euro we wont have complete control of our own taxes and interest rates. Rather than make decisions that are in the best interests of the UK, we'll have to bargain with he rest of Europe over what we can and can't do. But who cares about stupid shit like that; I won't have to queue up at the post office to get my money exchanged!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

No. There are too many idiots in the UK who would be willing to make their decision in a referendum based on sentimental jingoism.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

The ghost of Charles the Great still haunts all of Europe: I'm told some Germans used to call a 10-pfennig coin a "Groschen" and a five-pfennig coin a "Sechser."

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Interest rates would be set abroad, of course, but the tax boat's already sailed since the UK party to the the Stability and Growth Pact. Which nobody apparently gives a toss about, but still.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Well, outside the Euro we may be technically party to it, but realistically nobody can do anything to us if we ignore it. Inside the Euro, we'd have to play the game, since any debt we accrued would be net debt to the Eurozone and therefore have an impact on the other users of the currency (hence Germany getting increasingly stroppy with Italy).

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Quite true, of course. (It's actually looking more and more like nobody can realistically do anything to anyone who has decided to ignore it, but that's probably just me being peevish at the French and the Italians again.)

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

I've always supported the euro on ideological grounds, of course, but now the economic moment seems to have decisively arrived. My single greatest objection to the anti-euro lobby is that they are frauds who actually don't care about national independence, or anything like it - just as the NuTories they're so closely allied with aren't really "toffs" in the true sense but something far, far worse, they're not actually "Little Englanders" (although they dress themselves up as such and fool many/most of their opponents), they're something far more sinister, what I would refer to as "Little Anglospherists". They're perfectly happy for the economy to be dictated and controlled by international forces just as long as they're not in France or Germany ... they were the ones who sold off most of our national utilities, after all. The fact that Brown has not made the slightest attempt to take us in, despite his own economic tipping point having long since been reached, shows just how pathetically cowed he is (which, at the election, will strengthen the false idea that Labour and the Tories are "the same" and increase the chances of a far worse administration). I know that it's a wonderful ideal that may not necessarily work in reality, but the time seems to have come - or would have were Murdoch not still distorting and poisoning the whole of British public rhetoric.

Not that the euro would in itself alter all the aspects of British culture I despise - the dominant popular culture in Ireland is still mostly derived from the very worst of US culture. But, as symbolism, it would be enough.

And, yes, it's the Czech Republic not Czechoslovakia.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

I've heard at least one self-proclaimed pundit want to go the exact other way -- instead of accepting an ECB interest rate inevitably wrong for UK, and hoping for the best, he wished to revoke Mr Brown's most remarkable acheivement and restore parliamentary control over monetary policy. For what reason, I have no idea.

Off Topic

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

For anyone who's interested -- The BFI Southbank's Christmas season of Erotic Japanese cult cinema starts today! (http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_southbank/film_programme/december_seasons/wild_japan) The film line-up is fantastic.


エロ事師たちより　人類学入門



Woods Are Wet


生贄夫人

[the23.livejournal.com]

...and their citizens -- are positively screaming yes. In some cases the reversals of popular feeling have been rapid and extreme. According to a new poll, 52% of Danes now support dropping the Danish krone for the euro. That's up from 45% in a survey conducted just two weeks before. The Danish prime minister has said that the financial crisis "makes it evident" that Denmark needs to join the euro. This will probably happen in 2011, after a referendum.

The Swedes have rejected euro adoption in the past, but there too opinions have shifted radically in recent months. Last week 44% of Swedes polled in favour of adopting the euro, up from 34.6% in May. Their currency, the kronor, is also plummeting, making it more expensive for Swedes to travel abroad.

so in other words most swedes and likely the majority of danes (since you wouldn't assume 25 out of 26 putative yes men to be screamingly so) aren't screaming yes.

meanwhile greeks are rioting, spanish unemployment is through the roof and ireland is suffering from not being able to bump up interest rates to control its housing boom (that labour and its placemen were too inept to do so outside the euro is neither here nor there: presumably unlike the euro they won't be around for the long haul). a one sixe fits all interest rate policy for econopmies which have failed to converge (and often disobey the maastricht rules) is certainly far from optimal. alas so is our labour government and its inevitable slide into fiscal recklessness.