Happy Birthday, Euro!

Yesterday (January 1), I was watching Fareed Zakaria's program on CNN.  He began by talking about his predictions for 2011 and how some of them worked out and some of them did not.

One thing he was sort of right and sort of wrong about was the financial crisis in Europe.  At the beginning of 2011, Mr. Zakaria expected Germany to bail out its less responsible neighbors because Germany had the money.  Well, Germany did dole out some money, but it did not do so freely and it was not happy about it.  Furthermore, Mr. Zakaria said that in 2012, he expects Germany to continue to help out its southern neighbors, but that Germany would try to get the best deal that it could before doing so.  So look for more austerity in Europe.

Towards the end of the program, Mr. Zakaria mentioned that the Euro had turned 10 years old.

Mr. Zakaria played a video that had been played all over Europe when the Euro was launched.  The video spoke of Europeans moving forward into the future with hope and confidence.  After the video was over, Mr. Zakaria asked, "Hope? Confidence?"  Those emotions are not exactly what most Europeans of feeling right now.

Mr. Zakaria ended his discussion of the Euro by considering the Euro note's physical appearance.  There are no politicians, statesmen, or human figures of any kind.  This was a deliberate decision made so that no one would be offended.  When you look at the Euro note, what you do see are bridges and architectural forms.  What is interesting is that these bridges and architectural forms do not really exist anywhere in the real world.

We were left to draw our own conclusions.