From the comments, a superb paper on the euro:
The euro: It can’t happen, It’s a bad idea, It won’t last.
US economists on the EMU, 1989 – 2002
This paper being written by European Commission bods in 2009 to show just how wrong all those damn Yankees were.
Snigger.
Alan Blinder’s “Murphy’s Law of economic policy: Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed; they have the most influence on policy where they know the least and disagree most vehemently.”
Look at the Abstract, and its purported purpose. Was that really the purpose, or was the real purpose a bit of cheap point-scoring (like the present post, which at least has the merit of obviously intending to crow)?
Anyway, to ask the question is to know the answer.
So, next question(s): Who funded these shills, and in what universe is their study academically or intellectually virtuous?
Who pays the ferryman? and with what?
From that paper:
Just how much economic advice should we take from people who don’t know what the fourth letter of the alphabet is?