A Europe Made Of Money

A Europe Made of Money is a new history of the making of the European Monetary System (EMS), based on extensive archive research. Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol highlights two long-term processes in the monetary and economic negotiations in the decade leading up to the founding of the EMS in 1979. The first is a transnational learning process involving a powerful, networked European monetary elite that shaped a habit of cooperation among technocrats. The second stresses the importance of the European Council, which held regular meetings between heads of government beginning in 1974, giving EEC legitimacy to monetary initiatives that had previously involved semisecret and bilateral negotiations. The interaction of these two features changed the EMS from a fairly trivial piece of administrative business to a tremendously important political agreement. The inception of the EMS was greeted as one of the landmark achievements of regional cooperation, a major leap forward in the creation of a unified Europe. Yet Mourlon-Druol’s account stresses that the EMS is much more than a success story of financial cooperation. The technical suggestions made by its architects reveal how state elites conceptualized the larger project of integration. And their monetary policy became a marker for the conception of European identity. The unveiling of the EMS, Mourlon-Druol concludes, represented the convergence of material interests and symbolic, identity-based concerns.

'The Brussels Commission has just suspended its senior economist, Bernard Connolly, for writing a book savaging the prospects for a common currency. There are many who now believe he should be lauded as a prophet.' Observer, Editorial, 1 October 1995'Mr. Connolly's longstanding proposition that the foisting of a common currency upon so many disparate nations would end in ruin is getting a much wider hearing...' New York Times, 17 November 2011When first published in 1995, The Rotten Heart of Europe caused outrage and delight - here was a Brussels insider, a senior EU economist, daring to talk openly about the likely pitfalls of European monetary union. Bernard Connolly lost his job at the Commission, but his book was greeted as a profound and persuasive expose of the would-be 'monetary masters of the world.' His brave act of defiance became headline news - and his book a major international bestseller. In a substantial new introduction, Connolly returns to his prophetic account of the double-talk surrounding the efforts of politicians, bankers and bureaucrats to force Europe into a crippling monetary straitjacket. Hidden agendas are laid bare, skulduggery exposed and economic fallacies are skewered, producing a horrifying conclusion. No one who wants to understand the workings of the EU, past, present and future can afford to miss this enthralling and deeply disturbing book.

Most European countries are rather small, yet we know little about their monetary history. This book analyses for the first time the experience of seven small states (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland) during the last hundred years, starting with the restoration of the gold standard after World War I and ending with Sweden's rejection of the Euro in 2003. The comparative analysis shows that for the most part of the twentieth century the options of policy makers were seriously constrained by a distinct fear of floating exchange rates. Only with the crisis of the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1992-93 did the idea that a flexible exchange rate regime was suited for a small open economy gain currency. The book also analyses the differences among small states and concludes that economic structures or foreign policy orientations were far more important for the timing of regime changes than domestic institutions and policies.

The euro was originally seen as another stepping stone to a politically unified Europe. Yet with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the unification of Germany, the need for European political union as a means to ensure peace in Europe disappeared. Due to the fading will for full political union, the euro project lost the prospect of a stable platform in the foreseeable future. As a result, the euro crisis forces policymakers to develop a new architecture for EMU. ‘Europe’s Unfinished Currency’ proposes that this can only be done by way of a currency union of sovereign states, which in itself is a unique historical experiment as no such union has ever survived to date. This volume offers ideas of how the EMU could potentially work, and sketches scenarios of how things might evolve in case of failure. Key Insights: *Outlines the origins of the euro within the quest for the unification of Europe. *Explains the historical failures of past monetary unions, including the Latin and Scandinavian currency unions, the US dollar standard and the Austro-Hungarian union. *Posits that the European Central Bank in cooperation with a European Monetary Fund should act as the lender of last resort to all systemically important borrowers, including governments, to safeguard price stability. *Proposes a new EMU architecture, which includes the creation of a European Monetary Fund. *Discusses possible mutations of the EMU in case of failure.

The 10th anniversary edition, with new chapters on the crash, Chimerica, and cryptocurrency "[An] excellent, just in time guide to the history of finance and financial crisis." —The Washington Post "Fascinating." —Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek In this updated edition, Niall Ferguson brings his classic financial history of the world up to the present day, tackling the populist backlash that followed the 2008 crisis, the descent of "Chimerica" into a trade war, and the advent of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, with his signature clarity and expert lens. The Ascent of Money reveals finance as the backbone of history, casting a new light on familiar events: the Renaissance enabled by Italian foreign exchange dealers, the French Revolution traced back to a stock market bubble, the 2008 crisis traced from America's bankruptcy capital, Memphis, to China's boomtown, Chongqing. We may resent the plutocrats of Wall Street but, as Ferguson argues, the evolution of finance has rivaled the importance of any technological innovation in the rise of civilization. Indeed, to study the ascent and descent of money is to study the rise and fall of Western power itself.

This book combines history and political analysis of monetary integration in the European Union (EU) and discusses the main consequences of the euro on both member states' domestic politics and the EU's institutions and policies. The book is structured in three parts. In part I, historical analysis demonstrates that monetary instability and the need for international coordination in currency affairs emerged before political integration became an option. This suggests that monetary and political integration are convergent processes instead of two interconnected components of the wider European integration. Besides, the history of European monetary integration shows that many policies proposed today to face the euro and European crises had been discussed and tested in the past and that results were strictly connected to the specific conditions of the moment. Such a policy analysis-oriented approach to monetary history permits discussing with a different and innovative perspective the actual problems of monetary integration and the unmasking of misleading views of European integration widely diffused in the political debate since the end of the 2000s. Part II and part III discuss the political dimension of the European Economic and Monetary Union's (EMU) problems and the impact on member states' domestic politics. These sections consider themes such as EU institutional transformation, the new EU governance model that emerged due to the crisis, the problematic relationship between European integration and national democracy, and, finally, the role of monetary integration and opposition to the euro in feeding the growing electoral consensus in favour of populist parties. A conclusive chapter summarises the main results of this long-term analysis and answers some research questions anticipated in this book's introduction about the real nature and consequences of monetary integration.

Series title also at head of t.p.

Traces the history of European monetary negotiations from the 1960s to the 1990s.