Currency: Euro-Division?

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Some regional variations are usual in a monetary union; not every state in the U.S. grows at the same rate, for example. "It's no surprise that [monetary union] is not optimal for all countries. That was always going to be the case," says Ian Stewart, chief European economist at Merrill Lynch in London. Still, he adds, the probability of the euro's collapsing "is greater than zero. This monetary union doesn't yet have the characteristics of all other durable monetary unions: that they developed into a political union." Switching to a political union with a fully federal government would make it all but impossible for a European country to drop the single currency. That possibility has faded away with the recent votes. If the euro isn't to suffer a similar fate, it needs to show that it brings a real benefit to Europe's economy.