PHONY BALONEY NOTES FOR A PHONY BALONEY PROJECT:

The single currency's true fatal flaw (Gideon Rachman, 9/20/11, Financial Times)

If you want to understand why the euro is in such trouble forget, for a moment, debt and sovereign bonds - and take a look at the bank notes. The images on euro notes are of imaginary buildings. While national currencies typically feature real people and places - George Washington on the dollar bill, the Bolshoi theatre on the Russian rouble - European identity is too fragile for that. Selecting a place or a hero associated with one country would have been too controversial. So the European authorities chose vague images that represented everywhere and nowhere.

Now, a decade after euro notes first emerged from cash machines across the continent, this lack of a common identity is the fatal flaw that may sink the common currency.

Twice on our trip we found 20 Euro bills lying on the ground and we concluded that the things are so silly that folks don't even treat them like money.

Posted by oj at September 20, 2011 7:06 AM
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