Letters

摘要

You dismissed the claim that the euro's long-term survival requires a political union ("Euro follies", September 25th) by claiming that "plenty of previous examples of a shared currency...managed without a shared government". It is true that a currency union between a minnow (eg, Ireland, Panama or Luxembourg) and a whale (eg, Britain, America or Belgium) can manage without a shared government. But that is because the whale is able completely to ignore the needs of the minnow when setting monetary policy. This is not possible between roughly equal-sized partners, like Germany, France and Italy.