How the USA may end up killing the Euro
I have just completed reading the 2007 seminal article by Barry Eichengreen about "The Breakup of the Euro Area". The author describes the barriers that a nation would face should it decide to exit the Eurozone. The barriers are of different natures: legal, technical, political and economic. However, as we will see, the financial crisis, which originated in the USA with the subprime crisis before triggering a Euro crisis, has lowered these barriers significantly to a point where a break-up of the Eurozone has become a realistic scenario. The technical and legal barriers are about creating a new currency, redenominating debt in the new currency and enforcing it while preventing a probable bank run because citizens that expect a devaluation will try to send their money abroad. While undoubtedly large, those barriers are not insurmountable because it has already been done (example Argentina 2001) and this barrier may be effectively lowered when people, anticipating the poss...