The folly of common currencies

By Henry CK Liu

This is the 11th article in a series.
Part 1: The crisis of wealth destruction
Part 2: Banks in crisis: 1929 and 2007
Part 3: The Fed's no-exit strategy
Part 4: Fed's double-edged rescue
Part 5: Too big to save
Part 6: Public debt - prudence and folly
Part 7: Global sovereign debt crisis
Part 8: Greek tragedy
Part 9: Greek crisis, German politics
Part 10:The trillion-dollar failure

For the weaker economies of the eurozone, adopting the euro is comparable to the earlier unhappy dollarization experiment by Argentina, which should have served as a cautionary tale to all national economies linked to the European currency.

Commenting at the onset of the sovereign debt crisis in Greece, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez characterized International Monetary Fund (IMF) "conditionalities" imposed on Greece as being "unfortunately condemned to failure". She spoke from experience, as Argentina was hit by one of the world's biggest sovereign debt defaults in 2001, from which the once prosperous nation still has not fully recovered from IMF "assistance".