Library subscribers with US desideri are requested to get in touch with Pispolo who wil be in NY around the festival of the Liberazione. Any request arriving before 20 April should be in time.
More interestingly, P. will also be debating the Euro with another subscriber (who should comment, I'm beginning to keep count, services unused will be discontinued to non-contributers) in Warsaw, at the end of March. Comments and contributions on the Euro and/or the Poles are eagerly sought. Come along now, we can't leave economists to their own devices - we all know they think counter-intuitively and have to be guided back to reality.
5 comments:
As it turns out the Librarian won' be going to Warsaw; comments on the benefits of euroisation would still be interesting though.
In a nutshell, replacing the zloty (sounds like slotty, clearly the ideal coins for vending machines) with the euro brings the advantages of lower transaction costs (e.g. saving on commissions exchanging currencies), a stable currency in trading with eurozone partners, and above all lower interest rates, which in Poland have always been and still are exceptionally high. Interest rates have been fixed by an independent central bank who has often acted as if it were government opposition, and kept interest up as a virility symbol.
The costs of introducing the euro are the loss of signiorage (i.e. the revenue accruing from state monopoly of money issue, which will accrue to the European Central Bank, that will not distribute it to shareholders like the Polish Central Bank), the loss of a national symbol (only euro coins will have a Polish imprint) and the loss of national monetary policy. But monetary policy already being fully delegated by the government to the Polish Central Bank, and therefore is already out of government control. It makes no difference to the Poles whether monetary policy is made in Warsaw or Frankfurt. Nothing to lose except high interest rates.
Will prices rise as a result of the changeover? Probably not, it only happened in Italy and Greece for lack of government supervision and low competition. And eurocoins are just as slotty.
P. Does this apply to the UK to or is sterling less slotty?
sterling coins are definitely not slotty at all, they are fat, clumsy and presumptuous, if they had nails and chewed them off they would remind me of gordon brown.
Gordon Brown is getting a post all his own; the computer research section of the Library is building a file even as we speak.
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