It is as well not to fixate on the technical aspects of the Euro as means of exchange. The changes that happened before the introduction of the common currency are more important. Principally, European countries dismantled their oppositional labour movements, and curtailed their welfare spending. These were the principal preconditions for the Euro. The so-called 'free market' was largely an alibi for attacking labour, such as the abolition of inflation-indexed wages in Italy (to 'met the conditions of monetary union' of course).
Will there be winners and losers? I guess so, but less in terms of winner nations and loser nations, as winner social groups and loser social groups.
In message <p05100318b85bf36fa0d5@[216.254.77.128]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>Cian O'Connor wrote:
>
>>Isn't the Euro going to have a negative effect on the
>>weaker economies? They'll be stuck with a strong
>>currency (relative to their economies), so surely that
>>will have a negative effect on their domestic
>>economies. What's to stop what happened in Argentina
>>happening in Greece or Portugal?
>
>Excellent question. One countervailing possiblity is that the combo of
>a common currency, no trade barriers, development subsidies, and lower
>wages will bring investment to southern Europe. This is one of many
>reasons why Timothy Garton Ash described the euro as a hair-rasing
>experiment in unification through money.
>
>Doug
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