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So for me, there are only too options: the Euro or a return to national currencies. The Irish experience with the latter is not positive. Smaller currencies are too easy for even a medium size hedge fund to game.  You always end up paying a risk premium for sovereign (and private) debt as well.

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Absent gross incompetence and major regional imbalances like that, the Irish experience of the Euro has been wholly positive: Low risk premia, low interest rates, low transaction costs, currency stability, certainty in trade, budgeting and pricing.

The Irish experience of the euro ha been wholly positive if you exclude of course the financial crisis and its aftermath, especially the way the ECB forced Ireland to deal with its banks. I should note because of Anglo Irish Banks Ireland easily did worst of all countries in the recent European Banking Authority stres test.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Aug 28th, 2016 at 02:02:59 PM EST
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That's the bit you excluded from your quote.  Anglo Irish Bank is no more, and some of its former executives are in Jail where they belong albeit serving altogether too short sentences.

The cause and handling of the Irish banks crisis was a mixture of outright fraud, almost completely incompetent regulatory oversight, inappropriate interest rates and credit availability, and ECB extortion. It remains to be seen whether the ECB has really learned it's lesson, but you can't have a Single Market in financial services with 28 different regulatory regimes, and at least some progress has been made in improving banking oversight at an EU level.

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Sun Aug 28th, 2016 at 05:58:06 PM EST
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