I use to love that song, "united we stand, divided we fall." I don't know if you remember it. The chorus continues 'and if we ever find our backs against the wall... we'll be together." Well it comes to mind now as I think about the Euro, that economic glue that is supposed to bind together tribes, more recently nation-states,that have traditionally been at war with each other through so much of history. When the economic crisis hit the world, my brother (the financial prophet whose counsel I take very seriously on such matters) indicated, if I didn't hear him wrong, that the Euro would be okay for a little while but pretty soon, the European Union (EU) nations would start bickering. Various countries within the EU would fare poorly and the rest of the countries would no longer want to carry them. In the EU's case, if that is what happens, a united Europe would fall back on the nation-state tradition to rescue it and go back to life as usual. Instead of 'falling' it would probably stand divided.
The EU has been an interesting and advanced experiment in learning what it means to live, relate, and try to grow together in close quarters as countries, cultures, languages collide but decide to provide the room required by respect for sovereign peoples. The Euro, the economic language crafted to facilitate exchange erasing borders between these countries, was a kind of half-way point between erecting a structure that envisaged one nation-state with multiple new municipalities (each previously a nation-state of its own) and the formal bi-lateral trade agreements that have been springing up in the last few decades around the world.
There is no question the EU form is cutting edge politico-international restructuring. And we are all still waiting with baited breath to see if this can work because we know that technology is pushing us closer together and we need to develop forms of co-existence that enable us to recognize our increasing interdependence, co-dependence, and dependence on each other. This much is true, even if we do not fall when divided, it is increasingly difficult for us to stand alone. Yet it would be paradoxical if the Euro, the very symbol of the glue binding these EU countries together in a new form of international unity caused the splitting up of its various constituent parts.
When we decided as a world to create and favor economic fictions that facilitate merchant trade over the barter system, or even over the idea that we would in fact eat what we killed, or farmed (cultivated), we were also thinking about getting closer to the many people we could not see with our own eyes as human populations grew and we invented new ways or found our long lost brothers and sisters in distant lands who introduced us to new ways of making and then earning our daily bread, rice, noodles etc. We also found the people who represented the products that others may have created but did not travel the oceans to sell -- brokers, merchants, traders, intermediaries... the beginning of white collar business. Into all of this, the idea of one form of value to ascribe to all products and goods exchanged could not be avoided and 'gold' was the easiest, most common and highest form of currency for such exchange. Since then the American dollar has been accepted as such common currency, the standard bearing value that every national currency compares itself to.
With the unification of the European nation-states and the development of a common EU currency, some of us have been allowed to dream a little of that time when the world will join in one economic effort, albeit loose-knit, joined by that certain economic thread that allows individuals to encounter each other in a world marketplace as fluid as an internet chatroom or a skype line. What is interesting is that communication technology is a more literal form of getting together. When I talk to my clients over skype from their offices or homes thousands of miles away, either we have a good connection and we are able to communicate, or we cannot and then we try again as long as we both have the intention to do so. Not so for an economic currency, another tool to engage in exchange. The Euro is not just a symbol of the European Union, it is a common form of valuing the various economies of the EU. As such, it can be the tool that divides; that makes some people, even entire nations, feel they have less than their EU neighbors and for those neighbors to feel they are better, greater, and to see clearly that they have more. You don't have to be an EU nation to go through that experience. Our economic fictions have facilitated our exploitation of our distant brothers and sisters for our own gain, and then to use that gain to belittle, exoticize, and 'colonize' those others. It is just a little less palatable to treat our neighbors that way when we have come to adopt them into our own tribe... hence, creating an expectation that we intend to take care of them when the going gets rough.
It is a test of the underlying connection, symbolized by the Euro, as to whether in this time of need for countries like Greece, Italy, and Spain, the EU finds itself as one or many. Perhaps the EU can retain its unity without the common currency ... certainly the U.K. has fared no better; even with its separate pound, it has a lot in common with its poorer EU cousins these days!
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