The Wolfson Foundation recognizes two or three exceptional works of history every year with a lucrative grant. This year, it's decided to take its mandate one step further, by awarding a prize to the person(s) with the best answer to the question: "If member states leave the Economic and Monetary Union, what is the best way for the economic process to be managed to provide the soundest foundation for the future growth and prosperity of the current membership?"
The finalists for the prize were announced last week. To mention a few...Roger Bootle of Capital Economics, a private macroeconomic consulting firm, suggests that countries should depart from the monetary union amid great secrecy over a weekend with temporary capital controls. Cathy Dobbs, a private investor from London, analogizes the exit process to an egg, with some European regions serving as its white and others as its yolk. And Neil Record of Record Currency Management, an independent currency manager, avers that it's time for the whole monetary union to dissolve because "the argument that the single currency is permanent no longer holds true."
Though not a finalist, the proposal that caught my attention came from a dark horse candidate named Jurre Hermans. According to Mr. Hermans, a 10-year-old school boy from the Netherlands, Greeks should first be ordered to exchange euros for drachma at banks throughout the country. After collecting the euros, the banks would then surrender them to the Greek government. The government, in turn, would bake the notes into a "pancake or pizza." And finally, public officials would offer pieces of said pancake or pizza to the country's creditors -- presumably in a "take it or leave it" type of arrangement.
Believe it or not, it's not all about economics
It seems to go without saying that Mr. Hermans submitted his proposal in jest. Yet, I can't help but think he may be onto something. Namely, turning Greek pecuniary obligations into pizza and/or pancakes is probably the only way to make them appetizing to investors. To make the transformation inviting, however, it seems they'd need the assistance of Italians in the former case, and perhaps the Dutch in the latter -- we're not talking about gyros here. And this type of collaboration, of course, is generally possible only within some type of political union like, say, the European Union. And it's this point, levity aside, that many economists seem to forget.
Although this may be hard for economists to grasp, the Eurozone is about much more than economics. I discussed this last week in a column about the historical and political reasons for the federation. And more recently, Wolfgang Munchau, an associate editor of the Financial Times, addressed the legal impediments to a breakup. Membership in the monetary union is not a contract, says Munchau, but enshrined in European treaties, which say that the currency of the European Union is the euro. While there's some wiggle room about entry, especially for countries that have opted out like the United Kingdom and Denmark, there is no wiggle room about exit. The latter simply wasn't contemplated by its founders.
As I've said before, the breakup of the Eurozone isn't simply an academic exercise for economic professors to mull over and insert into the same algorithms that got the continent into the mess it's now in. While it's convenient for economists to blame politicians for the continent's sovereign debt problems -- as politicians do share some of the blame -- a more proximate cause was the financial crisis itself. Lest we forget, an aggravating cause of the latter was the financial deregulation spearheaded by economists. At the end of the day, in turn, meaningless exercises like the Wolfson Prize are little more than means of distracting attention away from the real culprits of the sovereign debt crisis.
It's not all bad news for investors
Of course, crises like the one in Europe aren't categorically bad for investors. In the middle of last month, for example, it was reported that American billionaire Wilbur Ross reaped a 105 million-euro gain from a five-month investment in Bank of Ireland (NYSE: IRE). And shares in the National Bank of Greece (NYSE: NBG), Greek shipper DryShips (Nasdaq: DRYS), and French telecom Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) have all rallied this year, up 10%, 58%, and 36%, respectively. But as I've warned before, given the uncertainty surrounding the situation, investments like these should be undertaken only by those comfortable with the attendant risk. A much safer alternative would be to stake your claim in one of the companies identified in The Motley Fool's free report about three American companies set to dominate the world. To access your free copy today, click here now.
