{"id":926,"date":"2018-06-03T09:29:20","date_gmt":"2018-06-03T09:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/euromenaenergy.com\/?p=926"},"modified":"2018-06-03T09:29:20","modified_gmt":"2018-06-03T09:29:20","slug":"the-euro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/?p=926","title":{"rendered":"The Euro"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_929\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-929\" style=\"width: 480px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-929\" src=\"http:\/\/emimer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/1x-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"320\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emimer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/1x-1.jpg 480w, https:\/\/emimer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/1x-1-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-929\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A stack of 50, 20 and 10 euro notes is arranged for a photograph inside a Travelex store, operated by Travelex Holdings Ltd., in London, U.K., on Wednesday, March 6, 2013. The U.K. currency weakened against all except one of its 16 major counterparts as 11 of the 39 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News predict the central bank will tomorrow increase its asset-purchase target to at least 400 billion pounds ($603 billion) from the current 375 billion pounds. Photographer: Simon Dawson\/Bloomberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Hey, euro! For a while there, you looked like a\u00a0goner. During those debt crisis days in 2012 when Greece was imploding and Spain\u2019s banks were teetering and the Germans were asking why they had to pick up the bill, there was a serious wobble. Common European currency? Remind us, please, what Europeans actually have in common. Now with Britain heading out of the European Union and Greece in a\u00a0perpetual pinch, there are constant reminders of the euro\u2019s shortcomings. Though the rules governing the 19-nation shared currency have been tightened since the crisis, there&#8217;s still a regular chorus of\u00a0business leaders and politicians\u00a0who say that its demise is just a matter of time.\u00a0The latest challenge:\u00a0populist politicians\u00a0capitalizing on\u00a0discontent\u00a0and\u00a0targeting the euro.\u00a0Can the world\u2019s most ambitious financial experiment\u00a0survive?<\/p>\n<h3>The Situation<\/h3>\n<aside class=\"inline-newsletter\" data-state=\"ready\"><\/aside>\n<p>As the euro stumbled on, wealthier nations in the north were often\u00a0pitted against\u00a0poorer ones in the south, amplifying the differences among them. Anti-EU protest parties have gained support from voters fed up with the failings of other member countries and the loss of control to bureaucrats in Brussels. Withdraw from the euro is a rallying cry for Italy\u2019s\u00a0Five Star Movement\u00a0and Marine Le Pen\u2019s National Front in France, which\u00a0rattled investors\u00a0before a presidential election in May with\u00a0promises\u00a0to redenominate the country\u2019s\u00a0debt. Greece has\u00a0struggled\u00a0to qualify for crucial loans after\u00a0surrendering\u00a0to its third bailout in five years in 2015 to remain part of the euro. Months of bitter disagreement and Germany\u2019s insistence on more\u00a0austerity\u00a0left a lingering sense that Greece will have to leave the currency union eventually. Europe\u2019s slow recovery from a double-dip recession hasn\u2019t helped, with euro-zone unemployment forecast to remain above 9 percent for a ninth year in 2017. The euro\u00a0dropped\u00a0by the most on record in June 2016 on the\u00a0surprise decision\u00a0by British voters to leave the EU, even though the U.K. is not part of the common currency.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-927\" src=\"http:\/\/emimer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/800x-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"734\" srcset=\"https:\/\/emimer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/800x-1.png 800w, https:\/\/emimer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/800x-1-300x275.png 300w, https:\/\/emimer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/800x-1-768x705.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>The Background<\/h3>\n<p>The precursor to the EU was\u00a0set up\u00a0in 1958, as the continent\u2019s leaders vowed to make another war between them all but impossible. The euro came in 1999, when a group of 11 countries jettisoned marks, francs and lire and turned control of\u00a0interest rates\u00a0over to a new central bank. The common currency\u2019s scale provided exchange-rate stability and better\u00a0access to world markets. It Un homme tabass\u00e9 par les gendarmes _ Comores Infosdid not, however, impose uniform financial discipline; to avoid surrendering national sovereignty, politicians largely sidestepped a\u00a0unified approach\u00a0to bank regulation and government spending. To the extent that there were rules, they were\u00a0flouted. The events that brought the euro to its knees came during the global rout in 2009, when Greece came clean and said its budget deficit was twice as wide as forecast. Investors started dumping assets of the most indebted nations and borrowing costs soared. The shared euro made it impossible to devalue individual currencies of weaker economies, limiting options for recovery. Politicians lurched through bailouts for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus plus a rescue of banks in Spain. The panic fueled\u00a0fears\u00a0of a\u00a0breakup\u00a0as fragile banks and their\u00a0holdings of government bonds\u00a0exposed the common currency\u2019s vulnerabilities.\u00a0The firestorm abated in July 2012, when European Central Bank President Mario Draghi pledged to do \u201cwhatever it takes\u201d to save the euro.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Argument<\/strong><br \/>\nEuro-area leaders say the common currency is now more resilient in the face of shocks. They argue that even if Greece were to fall out of the euro, the currency would survive, though there&#8217;s a vigorous debate about how serious the economic and political consequences would be. New systems have been put in place to centralize bank supervision and build firewalls between troubled debtors and taxpayers. The measures still may not have gone far enough. Aspirations by the euro&#8217;s founders for an &#8220;ever closer union&#8221; \u2014 including more oversight of national budgets and the pooling of debt \u2014 have not been realized. For some observers, the euro\u2019s flaws simply sow the seeds for another crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey, euro! For a while there, you looked like a\u00a0goner. During those debt crisis days in 2012 when Greece was imploding and Spain\u2019s banks were teetering and the Germans were asking why&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":929,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,57,97,119,120,121,137,139,174,201,202,209,232,233,244,246,249,256,277,279,287,288],"class_list":["post-926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aramco","tag-baroudi","tag-dollar","tag-eu","tag-euro","tag-europe","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-lebanon","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}