The euro?

Note this piece by Scot Lehigh in the Boston Globe suggesting that the euro may be in trouble following the collapse of "ever closer union." I would have thought that it was exaggerating matters - still, over the weekend, I had long conversations about the French and Dutch elections with a very astute French journalist, the top editor of a leading French business/finance/economics magazine. He took me quite by surprise by telling me that he thought the euro was in trouble - and, moreover, that in the name of democracy (not rational economics, he took pains to emphasize), he had voted ... "non."

(Update, Sunday, June 19, 2005: Martin Vander Weyer has a terrific article in the Spectator - "You Can't Bank on the Euro," Spectator, 11 June 2005, but unfortunately behind a subscriber wall.)

(Update, Monday, June 20, 2005: Irwin Stelzer has an excellent Daily Standard piece on how uncertainty over the future of the euro is leading a "flight to quality" among central banks, away from the gradually building policy of replacing dollar reserves with euro reserves, and back to dollar reserves. The effect is good for the US economy in the short term as, once again, foreign central banks are underwriting American monetary policy. Here.)