Barry Eichengreen Quotes

It is obvious that the monetary union among 17 very different European countries does not work. As an economist, I know that the Eurozone is not an optimum currency area, as defined in economic theory.

The euro zone must strike for a better governance structure, and there is no alternative to that. Euro zone countries must either develop an exit mechanism for troubled members, or it should embrace a closer political union: an effective governance structure that is capable of enforcing rules.

Interest rates do not have to be identical across the whole euro area, but it is unacceptable if major differences arise from broken capital markets or concern about a euro area break-up.

I think that France has not made it clear enough recently to our German friends how important it is to introduce euro bonds as a tool against speculation. And how the necessary budget discipline needs to be accompanied by growth.

Giving Northern Europe a veto over Southern Europe's budgets will not hold a monetary union together. The euro zone will continue to need the weaker countries to stomach decades of high unemployment to grind down wages.

The most important thing is to defend the euro.

The European Union that emerges from the Eurozone crisis is going to be a very different body. It will be transformed perhaps beyond recognition by the measures needed to save the Eurozone.

If I had political responsibility, I would want to prepare for a plan B that would foresee that the European currency union, that the eurozone, no longer necessarily consists of 17 member states. And that means to make provisions so that other countries are not pulled into the maelstrom through contagion.

The 1992 crisis proved that the existing system was unstable. Not moving forward to the euro would have set up Europe for even more disruptive crises.

We are near, very near, to an end to the eurozone crisis... The worst - in the sense of the fear of the eurozone breaking up - is over. But the best isn't there yet.

The most pressing and significant problems in the global economy are unsustainable structural issues with regard to the E.U. - fiscal deficits and the structure of the E.U. itself.

Is Europe going to be breaking? I don't think so. I think the euro will stay. I think at the end of the day Europeans will find the solutions in order to hold Europe together.

Britain is not in the single currency, and we're not going to be. But we all need the eurozone to have the right governance and structures to secure a successful currency for the long term.

You've got some very powerful countries: Poland, the United Kingdom, Sweden and others who have a genuine desire to see the euro zone straighten itself out. It's good for all of us, whether you're in the euro zone or not, to make sure that it doesn't lead to a fracturing.

I would say that fears of the euro area breaking up are unfounded.

In my mind, there is arguably a greater risk of a default on the debt of a U.S. state than there is on the debt of a euro-area member. I consider it unthinkable that a euro-area country would default.

The euro must be defended, or uncertainty about the European Union will be widespread.

In order for the E.U. area to stay together, they needed to form a banking union, which meant they needed to have a common credible deposit insurance guarantee for everybody in the E.U. area.

The strongest institution in the hands of the European Union is the euro.

I wanted to start by saying that the eurozone - there are two reasons they formed the European Union. One is for political peace and rationalization. And I think that's a good thing for a continent that went through hundreds of years of wars.

There is a proposal to divide the currency zone into a north and a south euro. There is also the idea of setting up a core monetary union in the middle of Europe. I disapprove of these debates. Instead, we should devote all of our efforts to supplementing the monetary union with a political union.

Part of the concept of the euro zone was to establish a common market. The banks were going to bank across all their countries like we bank across states. But that concept got killed for a whole bunch of reasons that I won't get into. That was a good concept, by the way. It may yet return, because there are huge economies of scale in banking. That's another thing people don't quite get.

Those who are saying that Mario Draghi is in the camp of those trying to push Greece outside the Euroarea, are wrong.

The current Eurozone is obviously dysfunctional. And serious people within Germany and elsewhere know this to be the case and know things cannot function this way forever.

Countries themselves need to do everything possible to remain in the euro zone.