The other extreme works too, of course – that is, Europe under a pre-euro system, with each country having its own finance minister and managing its own currency. Under that system, when one country experiences a slowdown, it can roll out remedial monetary policies because it is free from the shackles of a common currency. These include expanding the supply of money – what the Americans call “quantitative easing” – and devaluing the currency to make the country’s exports more attractive. But these were tools that the eurozone countries gave up as a result of their entry into a common monetary
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