Support for euro in doubt as Germans reject Latin bloc notes

[bijou]

The Germans have been traditionally keen on all things EU, if they are starting to baulk at the euro then trouble may well be in store. It will be interesting to see if the big middle east oil producers remain quite so keen on the euro as a trading currency.

Ordinary Germans have begun to reject euro bank notes with serial numbers from Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal, raising concerns that public support for monetary union may be waning in the eurozone's anchor country.
 
Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper says bankers have detected a curious pattern where customers are withdrawing cash directly from branches, screening the notes to determine the origin of issue. They ask for paper from the southern states to be exchanged for German notes.

Each country prints its own notes according to its economic weight, under strict guidelines from the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. The German notes have an "X"' at the start of the serial numbers, showing that they come from the Bundesdruckerei in Berlin.


Italian notes have an "S" from the Instituto Poligrafico in Rome, and Spanish notes have a "V" from the Fabrica Nacional de Moneda in Madrid. The notes are entirely interchangeable and circulate freely through the eurozone and, indeed, beyond.

People clearly suspect that southern notes may lose value in a crisis, or if the eurozone breaks apart. This is what happened in the US in the Jackson era of the 1840s when dollar notes from different regions traded at different values.

...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/06/13/cneuro113.xml

[franksolich]

You know, that's interesting.

I thought the value of the "euro" was supposed to be universal, like the value of the dollar (or British pound or Canadian dollar or Mexican peso or Russian ruble), its value determined by some sort of European central bank.

I never paid much attention; I had assumed this central bank, whatever it is, would issue the currency, not the governments of the different countries in the European Union.

Weird, that a "euro" issued in Greece would have a different value than a "euro" issued in Belgium.

I've been saying this for years, and continue to say it; the European "Union" is a temporary transient phenomenon, and sooner or later will crumble apart.  The recent inclusion of former Soviet colonies in central Europe has been bearing this out, as those who once lived under socialism aren't that keen on living under socialism again, even if more benign.

The bureaucrats in Brussels, Paris, and Berlin are finding they aren't universally popular.

It took a bold act of courage, for Norway to buck the trend and stay out of the European "Union" altogether, and for the British to retain their own currency rather than adopting the "euro"--but one suspects there's going to evolve more and more exceptions, until the European "Union" is no more.

[Lord Undies]

Just wait until Ireland rejects the Lisbon Treaty.