You can’t bank on the euro

All sorts of revealing things have been said in recent days about the survival chances of the euro. Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, declared that talk of disintegration was ‘complete nonsense’, as crazy as the suggestion that California might break away from the dollar. EU economics commissioner Joaquin Almunia reached for a different comparison, describing the euro as ‘an old-style marriage where divorce does not exist’. Meanwhile a spokesman for the German Bundesbank said the bank’s president, Axel Weber, considered the euro to be ‘a unique success story’ and that ‘he will not participate in such an absurd discussion’ — despite a story in Stern magazine that he had done precisely that, in a secret meeting with German finance minister Hans Eichel and a group of independent economists.

Then there was Peter Mandelson, in a television interview with Jonathan Dimbleby, declaring that the single currency was ‘absolutely not’ an issue in the crisis provoked by the French and Dutch referendum results.