If Britain had joined the euro...

pqrdef

... everything would have been different. It would have been more like Europe joining the pound. The centre of the euro universe would have been London, not Frankfurt. Almost all international financial euro business would have been done in London, and in English. All euro-denominated stocks of any importance would have been quoted on the LSE. The ECB would have been located in London. Britain would have been able to dominate the management of the euro, and would have done it in a very different way.

(Is this where I run away very fast?)

bendix

No need to run away pqrdef. You're conclusions are so ridiculous that noone would engage in serious discussions with you about them.

FTBFun

What about - Gordon Brown should be congratulated for keeping Britain out the Euro?

pqrdef

bendix wrote: »

No need to run away pqrdef. You're conclusions are so ridiculous that noone would engage in serious discussions with you about them.

Which particular statement did I make that isn't obviously correct, and why?

Mallotum_X

I do think if he had joined then London may well have been more influential, however we would probably be in a bigger mess overall than we are now. We would have had no more chance of keeping out the dross than the Germans had, and we wouldnt have been able to [STRIKE]trash[/STRIKE] sorry devalue the currency by 20 odd percent.

I used to be quite keen on the Euro, but have changed my opinion watching the way this has played out so far.

pqrdef

Mallotum_X wrote: »

and we wouldnt have been able to [STRIKE]trash[/STRIKE] sorry devalue the currency by 20 odd percent.

I think we could have. Euro monetary policy isn't set in stone, it's set in Frankfurt. And the only salvation for the euro is for it not to be set in Frankfurt.

Mallotum_X wrote: »

I used to be quite keen on the Euro, but have changed my opinion watching the way this has played out so far.

It's been appalling - but it's the people, not the euro. Different people, different euro.

Mallotum_X

Policy wouldnt have been decided by British politicans alone even if London had been the european banking centre. We would not have been able to set monetary policy for whats best for us, no more than the Germans. Instead we would, like the Germans, be having to bail out everyone else.

Single currency only works in this situation with common economic and therefore political policy, I dont think very many would be keen on what that entails.

pqrdef

Mallotum_X wrote: »

Policy wouldnt have been decided by British politicans alone even if London had been the european banking centre. We would not have been able to set monetary policy for whats best for us, no more than the Germans.

But the Germans have been setting monetary policy for what they thought was best for them. Many of them still think so. They're not blaming any of this on their own excessively tight monetary policy, they're blaming it on the "Anglo-Saxons" and their excessively loose monetary policy.

Although of course it was only the Americans, pre-crash, and even a German might have thought to wonder why Greenspan could keep interest rates so low for so long and not cause rampant inflation.

But one of the more remarkable features of the whole fracas is the way the Germans have suppressed discussion of eurozone monetary policy and kept it off the table, as if it were a completely irrelevant non-issue.

nomobel

The term Euro-crisis is misleading, as there is no currency crisis. There is a debt crisis in Greece, Italy the USA and the UK. Ireland is showing the way out of the crisis, which is similar to the route Britain is taking. If Britain had joined the Euro nominal house prices would have dropped some 25% more (which is the drop in house prices in Euros) and the cuts would be the same. Britain would still have to apply the same cuts and would have the highest rate of unemployment in 17 years, but everybody would be blaming the Euro for it, just like politicians and the press are doing no.

Strangely enough, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Finland are all in the Euro and have the lowest unemployment rate in more than a decade...

StevieJ

nomobel wrote: »

Strangely enough, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Finland are all in the Euro and have the lowest unemployment rate in more than a decade...

Not for long according to Goldman Sachs

The pair says that the euro crisis is catching up with Europe’s top economy. The political squabbling across the Continent has affected business confidence in much of Europe and now Germany as well. Gross domestic product grew only 0.1 percent in the second quarter compared with the previous quarter. Orders for German companies fell for a second month in August, the manufacturing sector expanded at the weakest pace in two years in September, and in the same month German business confidence dropped to a 15-month low

.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/germany-teeters-on-the-edge-of-recession-10132011.html

paddyrg

nomobel wrote: »

Ireland is showing the way out of the crisis

Didn't we give them a huge bailout? And they have tens of thousands of abandoned building projects across the country. Hardly shining through ;-)