Two thoughts about Finland going the neo-markka route

Sir, Gillian Tett describes the very interesting possibility of Finland going its way with a neo-markka “Euro woes make a Finnish parallel currency thinkable” October 26. My mind drifted in two directions.

First, after offering to convert the Euros of their own citizens into neo-markkas at a 1:1 rate, perhaps up to a certain amount per citizen, they should auction out a conversion amount to the rest of the eurozone, to the highest bidders, and deposit all euros obtained over the 1:1 rate into the European Stability Mechanism, as a sort of friendly goodbye gesture.

Second… why would they go alone… why not take the ferry over to Stockholm and chat about a mutual currency project? Finland and Sweden have so many similarities.

Why the British may be more careful falling in love with the euro.

Sir Wolfgang Münchau in “Why the British may decide to love the euro” November 17, makes some curious assumptions, first and foremost placing an equal sign between the dollar and the euro. The dollar is the currency of an already established country, with already established rules in how to handle the printing machines when in a crisis while Europe, whether we like it or not, is still a work in progress with little design on how to go about and print out Euros in order to fund European bail-outs.

Of course, a more accepted and wider used currency should in normal circumstances “offer more protection from speculative attack” than “a free floating offshore currency unit” (what a belittling way of referring to the historic pound sterling) but the fact is that current circumstances have very little to do with speculation and much to do with harsh realities.

Since Münchau in this context also brings up Iceland perhaps he could explain to us how much better off Iceland would have been had they used Euros instead of their Krona. As I see it Iceland would just have been able to run up quite a bit more leveraged debt, before all hell broke lose. Is that good?

At this junction one Pound Sterling gives a claim on a weakened but defined England while one Euro places a not completely defined claim on a not completely political Germany-and-Italy averaged Europe; and which of them might look stronger to the markets down the line, is yet to be seen.