Wednesday, August 31, 2011

There wasn't only one

Matthew Yglesias, amid another weirdly flippant reference to Nazi Germany ("Operation Anschluss")

 [Quoting Hans-Olaf Henkel]  That is why we need a plan “C”: Austria, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands to leave the eurozone and create a new currency leaving the euro where it is. [end quote]

you could see this as basically a re-creation of the Holy Roman Empire. ... Someday, rich Northern Italy might succeed in separating from the poorer provinces and might want to sign up, approximating the HR Empire at its greatest extent. We might look back on the past 200 years as a kind of weird interregnum characterized by a series of madcap schemes (by Napoleon, Hitler, Jean-Claude Trichet, etc.) to impose political unity on western Europe.

Hilarious, except for one problem.  The Holy Roman Empire didn't use a single currency.

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