tpm

Brockman is one of the biggest donors to Trump.

probably as much flooding as during a typical pre-climate change El Nino.

climate change makes El Nino stronger

> (hurting importers)

Of course a fiscal crisis is a crisis but that might not be so bad in the long run? If we, as EZ, can't balance a budget and balance a current account, lowering the value of the currency will surely help with that, if it's possible at all.

> (hurting importers)... (hurting exporters)

But that's also called a diverse economy and you have to balance that in any big economy anyway.

> However, pegging Gambia's currency to USD only works in short terms.

How short? Ecuador is not even pegged to USD, it completely abolished its own currency back in 2000, while both Kosovo and Montenegro have done the same with euro. There are other economies whose currencies are far from freely floated. Of course this does not apply to big EZ economies. But it doesn't have to, because they can actually influence the monetary policy.

> Having checked it's Germany.

It's Slovakia.

> I don't quite see the convergence this is supposed to show.

Well you should see it now.

> This is nutshell what France was doing (on a less apparent scale). It was pegging its weaker currency to EUR (because it's a large importer).

And as was the case with Greece and in a lesser way with the rest of PIGS, there will come a painful payback time for France too (or it's already here). They are still a subject of the bond market.

But a broader point can I think be clearly seen here: if France (and others) can't run huge deficits and then simply devalue their own currency anymore, then that is surely convergence too?

He is funding Nazi parties.

That would be against the law in the EU, provided the manufacturer is still in business of course. It's I think 15 years after they stop making the model they have to have the parts still available.

Makes sense too as the average age of cars is going up.

Evaporation can be solved by covering the reservoirs, so the water can't evaporate. Geography is the real issue. Costs to build possibly too.

There is certainly a bunch of bad stuff in meat (and in industrially produced vegetables too) but that is separate from the established carcinogens contained in processed meat, which is AFAIK mostly nitrates from curing salts reacting with the heme from blood (vegetables often contain nitrates too but they don't contain blood). Which is why the use of curing salts is heavily restricted (and antioxidants added) but OTOH still needed to restrict the growth of Clostridium botulinum. The other one would be carcinogens from frying.

> But those that happen are spread and amplified. > France crisis turned into a France+Italy+Greece+Belgium crisis.

So first of all what crisis are we talking about here, a fiscal crisis (there is definitely one in France) or the sometimes violent protests? And can you spell out the exact connection to eurozone in this 'spreading'? Also why did it spread only to 4 Eurozone countries and not the rest?

> You can't have them converge even with same currency!

why?

> If say Gambia

We don't have a Gambia here and you understand a common currency is only one part of the project. What we have are many different countries that are indeed converging - for example we've got car factories in countries that never had them before on this scale. Can you without looking it up say which EU member produces the most cars per capita? But we have to do more of that convergence.

And yeah, a political union would help, but then we both know it's not possible currently, so an ever tighter federation has to suffice for now.

> (also converging to what?)

to freely (as freely as possible) doing business across internal EU borders, in this case

> I hope you can see how this will cause losers to be more spiteful, while making winners more arrogant.

These are again fact-free arguments based on feelings. Who are the winners and who are the losers? Germany as a big exporter certainly doesn't look like a winner now, does it? Spain is doing better than Germany since Covid in GDP growth.

And of course we need the EU markets to be converging and you can't really do that with 27 currencies and monetary policies. Why do we need them converging? Because businesses like the US or China greatly benefit from having huge economies of scale in their internal markets, which makes it much easier to expand after that. The EU has to come as close as possible to that too, otherwise we have no chance and will suffer much greater economic pain. But I guess Varoufakis doesn't tell you that. He just makes you long for the great times where you had to pay for each currency exchange and every bank transaction to other EU countries.

As for far-right monsters, the nazis are currently the most powerful parties in Italy, France, Germany, Austria among others. So your thesis still doesn't make sense.

> You obviously are not good at identifying a fascist streak.

You still don't understand what I wrote. There is no fascist streak that would distinguish countries that adopted the euro from those that didn't.

> Stable EU states that aren't in the EZ. Like, say Norway or Switzerland.

Let's at least try being serious.

> Because I know how off mark you are about Croatian politics.

I am sorry, but what are you on about? Your thesis is that Eurozone accession enables future fascism ("Ngl joining the EuroZone (what Magyar did) is precisely the myopic decision that allows future fascist to rise to power."). What does that have to do with Croatian fascist leanings, which existed long before they joined the EU? Precisely nothing. So why are you mentioning them in connection with the euro?

> What I do know all major Euro economies are experiencing constant crises that never end

Compared to what?

> And that is excellent breeding ground for the populist movement.

Compared to what?

> Euro as a whole just produces more and more crises.

Compared to what?

There is no serious analysis, only talking points about perpetual EU crisis which are exactly what the fascist movements are pushing, so yeah.

I don't agree with Varoufakis regarding more or less anything he says; he's been consistently wrong for a long time.

You picked one state from seven, while not mentioning fascist elements in Hungary or Poland (before Tusk). Great calibration on your side.

So some other things you failed to mention:

- most CE economies are very open and so big businesses already do internal accounting and/or facturation in euros anyway

- a move to euros would save transaction costs for companies and individuals

- in Hungary at least this would also probably lower mortagage costs (they had some issues with mortgages in Swiss francs in the past as far as I remember)

> I have hope that at some point Russia too will begin to understand that the days of empire are behind us and that it is better to create than destroy.

I don't have that hope but if there is any path to that, it leads through many many coffins.

> how much of this is because of Russian influence in America. That could well have been a much larger factor than we know at the moment

There is some influence but it's not the largest part. It's just the robber barons of the world form natural coalitions and help each other.

Joining the Eurozone makes sense if your country does most of the business in euros. Which Hungary does. Czechia and I guess Poland do too and should have switched long time ago. Worth mentioning also that all of them legally committed to that on accession to the EU back in 2004; of the new EU members from CE, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and the Baltic countries adopted the Euro and I don't identify a fascist streak there.