I think the underlying problem with the Euro is tying strong fully developed economies with weaker developing economies. The Euro had one interest rate for all.
Right now for a country like Greece, if it was running it's own currency and setting it's own interest rate etc, it would take the required steps to devalue it's currency, that would in turn bring in revenue. But of course it can't to that. It can't do the obvious stuff to alleviate it's debt problems. And of course having cooked the books, and if you like having been encouraged to cook em, it's a much bigger problem than it ever should have been or needed to be.
'Specially VNA
I only understand bits of it. It's massively complicated. I did get the Euro wrong, I was in favour of joining, but it turns out when you consider how badly managed it has been, well we clearly have been better of out of it.
But frankly the fact that we have destroyed our manufacturing base is a far bigger problem for us than being in the Euro would have been in respect of where we find ourselves today.
And of course it's absolutely essential we stay within the EU. The Euro might be a disaster, but Euro economic trading union is not.
I did get the asset bubble right. Back in 2002/2003 I was keen to move house, I started looking and bid on a couple of places. But I stepped back as prices went through the roof. People laugthed when I stated that I would just sit back and wait for the prices to come back down. The bottom line is that house prices, asset prices have to relate directly to the amount of real money that is about. What I didn't know was that the banks, having lent all their money, sold asset packages (inflated asset packages) to get more money to lend that frankly didn't really exist, then they did this several times over, while naturally paying themselves billions upon billions pounds for being so clever in getting this scam to work. Nor did I have any idea who long it would take for the crash to come along, and I did begin to doubt myself. But in the end I moved house and at an almost reasonable price (though I paid the best part of 2 grand in taxes that the elite skip)
But what we are looking at now, is two decades of stagnation. OK make that three, as already the FT100 hasn't made real gains in 12 years as we speak.
And what the politicians are not ready to face up to yet is that the neo liberal capitalistic experiment has failed. It's broken and cannot be fixed. They just want to keep digging and hope somehow the good times (which we had on printed cash) will somehow return.