"To make the euro work, Europe needs to move much further toward political union, so that European nations start to function more like American states."And how would that work? Earlier in the column, he argues that that when an American state like Florida went belly up, Medicare and Social Security checks still rolled in. Inflation was also not a problem, as it has been in a country like Spain, because it could "freely attract workers from other states and keep labor costs down." Not sure if that's exactly what happened, given that unemployment was so high.
He does acknowledge that the United States of Europe won't materialize any time soon. I think the overall point of the column makes an excellent point, that the Euro was rammed down many European countries' throats before they were ready. Boris Johnson makes precisely the same point in his column this morning: if not for the Euro, the most obvious answer for Spain, and Greece, would be devaluation. Of course, to continue the analogy, that means Florida would have to start minting bikinis.
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