Euro-madness

I remember a session led by academics from Cranfield University.  It would have been 1998, in the run-up to the introduction of the euro, and my enlightened employer wanted an arbitrarily selected group to learn about world economic conditions.  It was made plain that the UK was in a reasonable position to join the euro, and certainly in a better position than some of the countries which were actually signed up to do so.

If we had joined in, and the weaker currencies had not, we would have had some uncomfortable moments as we aligned our cycles but would probably have gone on to reasonable success.  Adopting the euro along with the southern basket cases, given the observable unwillingness of all countries (including France and Germany) to follow the rules of the club, would have been very silly.