The new Europe of the single currency, with its ambitions to serve as a global rival to the dollar, wound up looking remarkably like the old one, with a dark trade of deals, dissembling and nationalism staining its first day out in the world. A monetary union without a fiscal union is particularly dangerous Politics aside, the euro also embodies a basic structural weakness that may be its future undoing, a commentary in The Washington Post says. The critical flaw in EMU is the inability of any nation within its membership to use monetary policy to escape a business cycle not shared by a majority of the members. Neither condition holds for the 11 prospective EMU members. A few instances in which a minority of EMU members have to survive monetary policies that are inappropriate for their needs could lead some governments to decide to print their own money again.
Monetary unions are difficult to create, but easy to take apart.
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