Introduction

Bill Lucarelli
Additional contact information
Bill Lucarelli: University of Western Sydney

A chapter in Endgame for the Euro: A Critical History, 2013, pp 1-9 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The aim of this short volume is to provide a critical historical narrative of the evolution of the European Monetary Union (EMU). The current debt crisis that has engulfed the eurozone has its origins in the three-decade long struggle to create a zone of “monetary stability” in the wake of the demise of the international post-war Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s. The history of the EMU, culminating in the Maastricht blueprint in 1992, reveals that this deeply flawed monetary edifice was informed by the prevailing neoliberal/monetarist economic doctrines, favoured by Germany. These ideological preferences in the framing of EMU were deeply imbedded from the earliest experiments in the early 1970s. The final blueprint, embodied by the Maastricht design of the euro, witnessed the birth of an international currency that was devoid of a coherent sovereign power. As Eichengreen has quite succinctly argued, “But most fundamentally, the problem is that the euro is a currency without a state. It is the first major currency not backed by a major government, there being no euro-area government, only governments of the participating countries” (Eichengreen, 2011, p 130). A stateless currency is, indeed, akin to Pirandello’s character in search of an author.

Keywords: Monetary Policy; Central Bank; European Central Bank; European Monetary Union; Bank Debt (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-37190-4_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781137371904

DOI: 10.1057/9781137371904_1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().