The End of the Euro?

The combination of political uncertainty and economic maladies could mean that the handwriting’s on the wall for the euro, Peter Boone and Simon Johnson write at Bloomberg. Unemployment rates are at record highs in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. Budget deficits and high government debt drag down national economies. And all of these problems are “compounded by five years of complete political denial,” according to Boone and Johnson. “Is there any hope for the euro dream?” they ask. An answer may lie in the European Central Bank, but even that may be fraught with peril. As for austerity, those plans have been “huge social and political failures, removing one more hope for saving the euro area.”