{"id":183839,"date":"2012-11-04T21:36:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T02:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/11\/04\/romania-discovers-that-the-euro-sucks-wet-farts-from-dead-pigeons\/"},"modified":"2012-11-04T21:36:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T02:36:00","slug":"romania-discovers-that-the-euro-sucks-wet-farts-from-dead-pigeons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/11\/04\/romania-discovers-that-the-euro-sucks-wet-farts-from-dead-pigeons\/","title":{"rendered":"Romania Discovers that the Euro Sucks Wet Farts from Dead Pigeons\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Romania is technically required to join the Euro at some point, but considering that they can set the date, my guess would be that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/11\/04\/world\/europe\/resilient-romania-finds-advantage-in-a-crisis.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss\">date will be decades, if not centuries in the future<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026But as the euro crisis has deepened, it has also helped that Romania and the others have kept their own currencies.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">That has given these still-developing countries a host of advantages, while many economists believe the euro zone\u2019s one-size-fits-all monetary policy has hampered Ireland, Greece and Spain in restarting their moribund economies. Indeed, many of the post-Communist states are having strong second thoughts about their long-running goal of joining the euro.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Mugur Isarescu, the governor of the National Bank of Romania, said in an interview that maintaining its own currency had given Romania the flexibility to set interest rates, control liquidity and allow the currency to depreciate to help rein in the deficit. In the absence of control over monetary policy, he noted, euro zone countries like Greece are forced to rely primarily on fiscal policy: taxing and spending.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cOf course there is a backlash and disappointment because E.U. accession was seen as a panacea,\u201d he said. \u201cThe dreams were too high.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In Romania\u2019s case, maintaining its cheaper currency, the lei, has made its exports \u2014 two-thirds of which go to the euro zone \u2014 more competitive and given it a lower cost of living that has made the country a sudden draw for highly qualified workers from struggling euro zone countries. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Seven of the 10 former Communist countries in the European Union have yet to adopt the euro. The Czech Republic, which uses the koruna, wants a referendum before joining and has cited 2020 as the earliest target date. Hungary has stuck with its currency, the forint, and said it would not adopt the euro before 2018. In Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently deemed the euro \u201ccompletely unattractive.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Romania\u2019s previous target for joining the euro zone, in 2015, is now \u201cout of the question,\u201d  is actually Mr. Isarescu said.\u2026\u2026\u2026 <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Czech Republic is potentially the most interesting case.<\/p>\n<p>They have a very real possibility, both by virtue of their location and history, of becoming a manufacturing powerhouse that could be a very serious competitor to Germany.<\/p>\n<p>If the Czech Republic drags its feet on Euro accession, and they start grabbing market share from the Germans, one wonders when the German politicians will start sounding more &#8220;Mediterranean&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Romania is technically required to join the Euro at some point, but considering that they can set the date, my guess would be that date will be decades, if not centuries in the future: \u2026\u2026\u2026But as the euro crisis has deepened, it has also helped that Romania and the others have kept their own currencies.That &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,984,1017],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-europe","category-international-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183839"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}