A Point of View: Making friends the shared currency way (BBC) {a long read, but worth it}
Last edited Sun Feb 26, 2012, 08:40 PM - Edit history (1)
Greece is falling out with its neighbours over their common currency - just as it did about a century ago. But forging closer bonds through shared currencies rarely works for long, says historian David Cannadine.
The continuing travails of the Greek economy and the threat they represent to European Monetary Union may both seem novel and unprecedented, but in several significant ways, we've been there before.
Far from being a recent innovation, there have been monetary unions for almost as long as there has been money. But across two and a half millennia, and whatever varied forms they may have taken, few of them have endured, which helps explain why they've been so easily and so largely forgotten.
On earlier occasions, too, the part played by Greece has been pivotal - sometimes positive but sometimes negative. And history has recently been repeating itself in other ways, for the present single currency is not the first such European scheme from which Britain has held aloof.
It's no exaggeration to say that European history is littered with the ruins of earlier endeavours. The most immediate predecessor to the EMU was the 19th Century Latin Monetary Union, which attempted to unify several European currencies at a time when most circulating coins were still made of gold or silver.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17140379
Longish article, and food for thought ... is a single currency desirable ? Sure, there are disadvantages to currency exchanges, but perhaps there is extra safety as well ... can an analogy be drawn to monoculture in agriculture, or lack of genetic diversity in populations? Both can be disastrous in the face of new diseases or other disruptions. Perhaps the so-called "basket of currencies" is the safer approach, just as mutual funds are a safer approach to the stock market. Discuss amongst yourselves. 