Europeans, How will you handle the death of the Euro?

The Euro is 90% assured to not exist in the next 6 months. European banks are already preparing for the split of the Euro zone, and the writing is on the wall with the financial markets and the political fiasco thats been happening. My question to Europeans is, how will this affect you? Is it not a big deal, will you just revert back to the mark, the franc or whatever currency you were using? I hope you all are ok, its definitely a troubling time in Europe right now (minus Great Britain).

where'd you get that percentage huh?

also minus norway, minus switzerland, minus poland...

Sweden uses Kronor anyway 
 
Maybe we can get rid of the $60 = €60 = 600 SEK bullshit now. 
 

My country got the Euro this year, so I will laugh and then I will laugh some more. 
 
Then I'll remember how our previous currency was gathered up and then destroyed so I'll laugh even more.
 
So it will be fun!

@Animasta said:

where'd you get that percentage huh?

also minus norway, minus switzerland, minus poland...

And Britain.

I liked the euro. It meant a lot less hassle but obviously the big countries didn't expect the little ones to go under.

I have to admit I am not an expert on this but even if the nature of the european union changes, I doubt countries will go back to their old currencies. That will cost an astonishing amount of money.

@Jack268: Why do you guys get an extra 0 :P?

@DriveupLife: Please share your calculations for arriving at said percentage.

That kind of sucks.

You're very ignorant about this.

Your "minus Britain" clause is nonsense. The British economy and the economy of the Eurozone are extremely closely related. Just because we don't use the Euro, doesn't mean we won't be affected. Our import and export trade is all largely reliant on Europe having a somewhat stable economy. If that happens, we'll be in a similar economic situation to the Eurozone. We won't have issues of currency transitions and whatnot, but our economy will most definitely suffer.

Even the USA will be affected too. This recession has highlighted just how much world economies are intertwined. This is a global thing. Just like in 2007/8 the entire world economies went down the toilet, if a large number of European countries end up in serious economic trouble, the effects will be felt far further afield than the Eurozone countries themselves.

I'm German and I would say I know something about German and European politics. We will have the Euro for a long time to come. What it'll cost us is a different question, but especially France and Germany will do everything they can to keep the Euro stable.

I've read alot of international press on this and most of them totally underestimate how comitted these countries are to their Union.

edit: And MattyFTM is right, Great Britain is so dependent on their Financial Market now, they need easy access to Europe. It would hit them very hard.

@Anwar said:

I'm really scared, but how do you Americans handle that your democracy 78,32 % assured will end in socialism? Obama's fault btw.

Where'd you get that number?

Liberal site most likely.

The percentage is more like 89.37%

That kind of sucks.

I'm German and I would say I know something about German and European politics. We will have the Euro for a long time to come. What it'll cost us is a different question, but especially France and Germany will throw everything they can to keep the Euro stable.

I've read alot of international press on this and most of them totally underestimate how comitted these countries are to their Union.

@Jack268 said:

@Still_I_Cry: One dollar used to be pretty exactly 10 kronor, but now one dollar is actually like 6 kronor which makes some prices ridiculous when compared to american prices. The 3DS was around $430 on launch.

Oh wow.

This thread is way too premature...

I really don't care.
 
Everything's gonna be twice as expensive again when they come up with a new currency, just like the euro did with the guilder.
 
Fuck it.

I still be using Kroner, so who cares.

Sweden uses Kronor anyway 
 
Maybe we can get rid of the $60 = €60 = 600 SEK bullshit now. 
 

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

Who am I kidding?

@zudthespud said:

@Animasta said:

where'd you get that percentage huh?

also minus norway, minus switzerland, minus poland...

And Britain.

I liked the euro. It meant a lot less hassle but obviously the big countries didn't expect the little ones to go under.

And Iceland, Though our currency is not actually that strong

The Euro will die when Germany as a country dies. Anything else is just pointless sensationalistic prognoticism

As an American I don't know too much about what is going to happen to the Euro. I thought that Germany would move away from it but @mnzy has said otherwise. I know that Portugal and Greece have had two of the biggest collapses among the EU. Isnt the Italian economy also really bad?

@goodwood said:

As an American I don't know too much about what is going to happen to the Euro. I thought that Germany would move away from it but @mnzy has said otherwise. I know that Portugal and Greece have had two of the biggest collapses among the EU. Isnt the Italian economy also really bad?

Yes Italy is bad, Germany designed the thing though, it is likely to go down fighting for it.

Somebody's making up figures.

Too big to fail - a term you Americans like to use - applies here. If Germany does not step in the IMF will have to. Hell even China needs a market to sell those $3 for 5 packs of tube socks in. The Eurozone might not look the same, with smaller countries getting fucked over and forming a new Euro block is France, Germany, Holland, etc. but it will continue in some form. If it does go down it is taking everyone with it, everyone who doesn't have an oil based economy anyway.

Also, as the OP has not posted in reply to where he got his figures from, can we all just assume his incites on this subject don't extend beyond watching cable news?

@Anwar said:

@Still_I_Cry: The Daily Show, that's news not just a comedy show on comedy central, right? :P

Comedy Central is a news channel.

So, it would follow that The Daily Show is indeed news.

I coulnd't care less.

Denmark still has the Danish Crown.

@themangalist said:

Even if I haven't for my life seen Euros, I still dig that idea of "universal" currency. So let's hope the situation is not as bad as it seems.

Universal currency isn't such a bad idea, it is universal exchange rates that is the problem. You lose one of the most important tools in monetary policy for controlling inflation and artificially stimulating slow growth.

@amir90 said:

I still be using Kroner, so who cares.

Dane or Norwegian? Dårlig med skivær i Oslo.

@Still_I_Cry said:

@Anwar said:

@Still_I_Cry: The Daily Show, that's news not just a comedy show on comedy central, right? :P

Comedy Central is a news channel.

So, it would follow that The Daily Show is indeed news.

Hey, if Fox News gets to be considered a news channel, Comedy Central deserves the same. I'm seriously wondering why they don't call Fox News 'Comedy Central' anyway.

@PrivateIronTFU said:

@Still_I_Cry said:

@Anwar said:

@Still_I_Cry: The Daily Show, that's news not just a comedy show on comedy central, right? :P

Comedy Central is a news channel.

So, it would follow that The Daily Show is indeed news.

Hey, if Fox News gets to be considered a news channel, Comedy Central deserves the same. I'm seriously wondering why they don't call Fox News 'Comedy Central' anyway.

Comedy Central encompasses all news channels then.

Our TV should be called Comedy Vision.

I live in Poland so luckily for me Euro is not my currency.

Little ignorant here but do France and Germany really need the Euro to sustain themselves? I'm getting the impression Germany would do fine without it.

I must admit I have absolutely no knowledge about economy. I'm still puzzled as to why countries won't secretly print money to pay off their debts.
 
Don't judge.

The danish currency is directly tied to the Euro, so I guess we're screwed?

@imsh_pl said:

I must admit I have absolutely no knowledge about economy. I'm still puzzled as to why countries won't secretly print money to pay off their debts. Don't judge.

Quantitative Easing (what you're suggesting) was one of the contributory factors that lead to World War II. Germany wanted to pay off their huge debt from the First World War, to they printed a bucket load of money. But it wasn't secret. It's was impossible to keep it secret then, and these days with advances in technology and the way we track money and transactions, it's even more impossible. Once people knew they were printing huge mounts of money, huge inflation took hold and prices soared. As a result, the government crumbled, the National Socialist German Workers Party got in power, and the rest is history.

Of course it wasn't the only factor in the rise of the Nazi's, and we would hope that our society has moved on to avoid such drastic consequences, but the fact still remains that such measures lead to huge inflation, which is never a good thing. Doing it on a small scale isn't the end of the world, but doing it on the huge scale that would be required to pay off the debt these countries are in would cause insane inflation.

The € was a pipe dream to begin with, Im surprised it have lasted this long. But if the Euro fails I'll still be using danish Kr., though it will still effect every economy in Europe and probably the World as well.

@imsh_pl said:

I must admit I have absolutely no knowledge about economy. I'm still puzzled as to why countries won't secretly print money to pay off their debts. Don't judge.

They do and are doing it at the moment. A lot of countries in the Eurozone are doing this at the moment. Italy for one. Quantative easing I think it is called. The only problem is that it leads to higher inflation in those countries.

On the larger point I am not sure if the OP is trolling slightly. It may be that Greece goes back to the Drachma (or some new currency) but I really don't think the Euro will vanish totally. The very worst case scenario is that it dwindles to a core of just France and Germany who I believe will never go back to their old currencies and they value the unity of Eurozone very highly as they still remember the misery caused by those countries' years of wars.

As for Italy and Spain they are both under new Governments which may make some difference (although I hear on the news that Bond yields reached record highs today for Italy so the financial markets are still not convinced).

The problem is that it is hard to see how any Eurozone country can revert back without causing chaos as people in these countries will rush to withdraw their savings into cash as soon as it looks likely, as leaving the Euro would in effect be a huge devaluation thus destroying people's savings. You only have to look at the example of Argentina in the 90's to see the instability this will cause.

I think in the end the Germans will be convinced to let the ECB become lender of last resort as the alternative outlined above is far, far worse.

The Glorious British Pound remains supreme!

@Harkat: Skiværet kan holde seg på fjellet, for dem som ønsker det :P

Så norske kroner :P

Still us Kroner in Denmark so losing the Euro wouldn't be much of a problem. Maybe it would make the price of steam games suddenly make sense again though. 

The economy is in a baaaaaaad state over here but i would be surprised if the euro isnt here in 6 months, germany and france will go down fighting... and if the euro does go then Britain is so fucked.

Well, countries in the EU never actually commited in their fulliest, and when things started looking bleak, they all jumped ship. At first, the idea was for the strong to feed the weak, and so in the end, a strong market would grow, where smaller markets could be strong, and strong markets even stronger xD. Sad thing is, its not in human nature to do this, which is why there is no perfect economy (neither capitalism or comunism will ever work because of us). So we are where we are. The strong care for themselves, while the weak crumble and die.

Its the sad grim way of life.

@Ventilaator said:

My country got the Euro this year, so I will laugh and then I will laugh some more. Then I'll remember how our previous currency was gathered up and then destroyed so I'll laugh even more. So it will be fun!

What country is that?

@Ventilaator said:

My country got the Euro this year, so I will laugh and then I will laugh some more. Then I'll remember how our previous currency was gathered up and then destroyed so I'll laugh even more. So it will be fun!

What country is that?

I'm not an expert, so somebody enlighten me: if a country surrenders its freedom to set its own monetary policy, but retains its ability to set fiscal policy, how is this not a recipe for disaster? Greece was free to borrow and spend as much money as it wanted when the world economy was doing well. But when the economy decided to shit the bed, they lacked one of the major tools that governments ordinarily have at their disposal to deal with a debt crisis: quantitative easing. While it causes inflation, that isn't ALWAYS a bad thing. It can certainly help debtors, at least in the short run. Obviously, it's not a perfect solution, and has to be implemented carefully.

I guess this whole crisis shows that you can't have it both ways: if you want to effectively control your country's fiscal policies, you need control over your monetary policies, as well, which means keeping your own currency. If you want to have a unified currency, you need to give up a lot of fiscal sovereignty.

So, to someone more informed than me - is there a plausible scenario in which the Euro is saved, that doesn't involve much greater political integration in the Euro Zone, effectively creating a "United States of Europe," or something close to it?