A clearly biased article that is intended to use some facts to distort the truth.
Firstly we have a very strange situation in the Italian government at the moment. However it is stretching the truth to say that it was forced on Italy by the EU.
Most of the article refers all the internal problems that have affected the Italian economy and then in a broad statement seeks to blame the entire situation on the single currency.
Ever since nearly every country in the world allowed itself to be influenced by new wave economists and float their currencies we have been in the hands of the banks and the currency speculators. Should we go back to fixed exchange rates? My response is that if we are not going to have a single currency the only option is to fix the exchange rate.
The real problem with the change to the Euro was that too many greedy people took the opportunity to make their own exchange rate from the lira to the euro. For example it was common for something that cost 1,000 lire to be sold at €1.00 not the €0.52 it should have been. Naturally this did not happen to wages, government services, traffic fines
, and such things as automotive parts, but it did happen across a broad range of goods and services. The effect was instant inflation which has taken years to arrive at a balanced equilibrium.
In the mean time those that could have increased their incomes (large company and government upper echelon employees, company directors, politicians, etc.) whilst at the same time throwing ordinary people into unemployment and poverty. Taxes have steadily increased and we are on that downward spiral that I mentioned before. The only thing that has saved Italy from a complete disaster is the high level of personal savings, and that won't last for ever, plus the thriving black economy that does not appear in the statistics.
By the way re-introducing the lira and devaluing the currency really won't help much. The tourist industry will pick up because a holiday in Italy will be cheaper, and so will the rural sector. Most of our raw materials are imported so manufacturing costs will increase and so will the cost of imported goods. Foreign companies would then rush in to buy what is left of Italian industry and move production to low cost countries.Unless the currency was valued at a ridiculously low rate Italy would still be too costly for the multinationals. I suspect we would actually finish up worse off.
PS. By the way the AUD has historically been worth about 1,000 lire with occasional fluctuations of minus 20% to plus 50%. Based on the current AUD EUR exchange rate and converting EUR to ITL at the official rate the AUD is still worth about 1,000 lire. That's interesting, isn't it?
![[Linked Image]](http://bradley.it/public_images/drive.jpg)
You know it makes sense! 
