Arguably, it did work reasonably well for the first few years of its public existence from 2002 onwards, but now, unarguably, it does not. Recession and high levels of unemployment is the norm, not just in the peripheral countries of Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Poland, etc but increasingly in the original group of six too. Italy and France are both experiencing double digit levels of unemployment; and the problem is now spreading to Germany itself, as its export markets in the Eurozone start to dry up. The high levels of unemployment in the peripheral regions of the Eurozone naturally leads to increased levels of migration to other areas of the EU which are performing better. Whatever we feel should be the case, our observations tell us that this is causing social and political problems too, especially in the UK, which we would be foolish to ignore.
There are many theories offered to explain the origins of the problem. The stated opinion of German right wing politicians and their ordo-liberal economic supporters is that there is nothing wrong with the Euro. If they can manage perfectly well with the Euro then so should everyone else. If they, like Germany would only just get close to balancing their budgets then all would be well.
See for example:
Furthermore, there tends to be a lot of finger pointing in the German circles directed particularly, but not exclusively, towards Greece. The criticisms generally include a past reliance on an oversized pubic sector, an inefficient system of tax collection, a past over-reliance on ‘money printing’ to fund government spending leading to higher than desirable levels of inflation and even systemic corruption. They probably do have a something of a point, no countries are ‘perfect’ not even Germany; but are the German right missing the point completely? From an understanding of just basic economics we can clearly see they are.
The fundamental problem is none of the above. There is also a widely accepted, but not necessarily correct, argument that countries need their own currency, which should be allowed to vary to allow countries to devalue or revalue their way out of economic trouble. That certainly would help but neither is it the core problem. Rather it is a problem of financial transfers, albeit an easily solved one, that is to be expected whenever two or more countries decide to share a common currency; one or more of which are large net exporters and one or more of which are large net importers. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a net exporter, if that is what countries want to do. Of course, for every net exporter there has to be a net importer willing to buy those exports. So, we firstly have to disabuse ourselves of the idea that the net exporters, like Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland (even though the Swiss are not in the EU) are somehow more virtuous than the USA and the UK (in the EU but not the EZ) who are net importers.
It makes sense, all round, to allow countries to choose whether to be net exporters or net importers. The alternative would mean clashes over trade, the imposition of high tariff barriers, and currency wars. It is no exaggeration to say that these clashes can lead, and have led in previous eras, to real wars too. No-one wants to see any re-occurrence of that.
How does it work when a net importer and a net exporter trade together using their own and, therefore, different currencies? Assuming that the two countries have the same trade pattern with each other as they do globally, there is an inevitable imbalance when it comes to the net importer being able to pay in its own currency. There is always going to be a ‘glut’ of that currency on the market, which if left alone would cause the currency to depreciate. That country would then be able to afford fewer imports, its exports would look more competitive, and so its trade would naturally move into balance. Neither country wants that, so the importer issues bonds which are obligingly bought by the exporter using the excess of the importer’s currency. The importer then re-issues the money obtained from the sale of those bonds into its economy by government deficit spending. In other words, the supplier lends money to its customer to be able to continue to be a good customer. The central bank of the exporter then stores the purchased bonds and just creates, or ‘prints’, extra amounts of its own currency to satisfy the need of its internal exporting companies to be paid in that currency.
So, despite all German assertions to the contrary, the policy of the Bundesbank has never been solely the minimisation of inflation. The Bundesbank was quite willing to ‘print’ as many DMs as was considered necessary to hold down its value to maintain the sales of German exports. An artificially lower exchange rate also translates into higher prices in German shops and so contributes to a higher level of inflation than may be the case otherwise.
This kind of arrangement can continue indefinitely. Of course, as the currencies are separate, they can vary over time in value in relation to each other, but, providing that inflation rates in the two countries are approximately the same, they do not need to. In principle they could be fixed, providing the exporter and importer co-operate to equalise their monetary transfers by the necessary issuance and purchase of government securities.
Therefore, if this arrangement can work with fixed exchange rates, it must be able to work with the same currency too. The process is simply same one, as before, of the exporting country lending back its surplus to the importing country so that it can continue to be a good customer. As the currencies are the same there does not have to be any bonds involved, it just needs money to be lent back, but there can be a transfer via bonds if that is mutually preferred. Money and bonds are just different forms of government IOUs in any case.
In the case of the Eurozone these would be the so-called Eurobonds which are widely being discussed, but adamantly opposed by German ordo-liberals. I fail to understand why. These are essentially the same people who were happy to lend their customers money when their currencies were different, so why do they have a problem now they are the same?
Ordo-liberals compound their mistake of not wanting to lend back the surpluses of the exporting countries in the EZ to the importing countries, by insisting that the importers should not borrow from anywhere else either. It may make sense for an exporter to have a balanced budget, but not an importer. The importer needs to sell securities and deficit spend the money received back into its economy. That deficit could be 3% of GDP, the Euro limit, but equally it could be higher. It makes no sense to even try to impose arbitrary limits on government deficits, which are also affected by the desire of populations to save financially. The deficits can, and should be, varied, as need be, to ensure the consistency of levels of inflation in different EZ economies. So a possible strategy for the ECB would be to set an inflation target of something like 3% for every EZ economy and issue Euros either via the process of quantitative easing if the exporting countries were unwilling to recycle their surpluses, or the encouragement of bond issuance or even straight lending of euros if they were, or a mixture of both.
3% inflation may be too high, even if only for a limited time, for many in the more prosperous regions of the EZ to contemplate, and they have said so in no uncertain terms. See for example:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/11211973/Mario-Draghis-efforts-to-save-EMU-have-hit-the-Berlin-Wall.html
However, the alternative is to leave things as they are. It will only be a matter of time before France is ruled by their National Front. Greece ruled by Syriza, Spain by Podemos, Ireland by Sinn Fein, the UK by UKIP. There will be an upsurge in support for new Eurosceptic movements emanating from both the extremes of left and right as the EZ economies, including the now prosperous ones, go from bad to worse to disaster. It is hard to see how that could be any preferable than paying a small price by way of an acceptance of slightly higher inflation, and the issuance of as many Euros and Eurobonds as are required to fix the problem right now.
PS Another similar view
http://www.3spoken.co.uk/2014/02/its-exporters-stupid.html
Modern Monetary Theory: Real Economics 
An absolutely excellent expose Peter! In it you hint at the solution – viz. ” there does not have to be any bonds involved; it just needs money to be lent back” – to the underlying “elephant in the room” that you conveniently?/[un]intentionally? ignore; namely the accepted creation of essential money as debt to themselves by commercial banks. Any successful expanding economy, as many have been over the past half century, requires an APPROPRIATE expanding money supply – the oil that allows economies to function and the fuel that drives them forward! Obviously too much causes inflation just as too little results in recession, deflation and on-going depression. But more significantly supplying this necessary new money as debt – either directly into the economy as loans by banks or indirectly through government bonds – is fuelling a disaster time-bomb. Any debt-based financial/monetary system will eventually stagnate; either through the increasing debt load extrapolating exponentially or simply through fear of the burgeoning problems. We don’t have to abolish the creation of all money as debt by commercial banks; we merely need to control it by hiking up capital reserve requirements so that they can no longer foster “Boom and Bust” as they are programmed to do!
It would also prevent all future banking meltdowns – the insolvent would simply wither away.
At the same appropriate expansion in the real debt-free money supply should have been allowed by a measured mix of
[1] Infrastructure capital expenditure – hospitals, schools, roads, railways even aircraft carriers! [No stupid PFI economic scams!]
[2] Lower taxation as there would have been no need to put aside up to £100bn p.a. funding state borrowing nor to fund the afore-mentioned capital expenditure.
All of this is very simple but getting from where we are now to where we need to be is not! The vested interests involved in the banking and financial sectors will have to be dragged kicking and screaming if it is not even already too late to do anything. On top of that, even if the will is there, how do we replace all the debt in the system without the funds cascading into asset bubbles and/or inflation. Compulsory direction/focus of the remunerating money will be essential through some form of sovereign wealth control but that starts to smack of communism!
More suggestions here….!
This is excellent! Would you mind if I translated this into Italian and reposted it?
Poland is not in euuro zone. poland has its own currency.
Yes you’re right. I shouldn’t have included Poland in my list of Euro countries. That was a slip on my part.
However, we need to ask why the Polish economy is in such poor shape with high levels of unemployment and underemployment.
The answer, I would suggest is that although, as you say it uses the Zloty , the currency is not free to float. It is pegged to the Euro and has not shifted much from a fixed rate of Euro0.24 = 1 zloty in recent years. The Polish government have committed to following the same rules as the Eurozone countries and are therefore experiencing the same problems.
It is not pegged http://images.bwbx.io/cms/2013-11-27/feat_poland49_chart2_315.jpg
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/euro-finance/poland-no-rush-join-euro-wants-entry-own-terms-302112
It has done relatively well compare to euro zone.
The GDP data I have for Poland looks somewhat less optimistic since the 2008 crash:
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/poland/gdp
Also the zloty looks to be remarkably stable in value against the Euro in the last few years . That would be unlikely to happen if the Polish government hadn’t decided to keep it stable. As your link suggests “Poland has found that having its own, free-floating currency gave it a strong shield against the global financial crisis” but the government does have to let it float to get that full benefit.
The Polish government also needs to stand up to the EU on questions of allowable debt and deficit levels.
Poland would be well advised to keep out of the Euro until the EU has shown it can work for countries like Spain and even Italy. The could be never – the way things are moving.