(Image courtesy Business Insider)
With a big tip of the hat to Will Collier, take a gander at this two-year-old Business Insider piece by Joe Weisenthal:
Margaret Thatcher was an incredibly polarizing figure, but everyone should be able to agree that she was absolutely spot on about why the Euro would be such a disaster.
As Peter Oborne reported in the Telegraph In 2010, Thatcher’s two autobiographies, “The Downing Street Years” (1993) and “The Path To Power” (1995) discussed the tactics she would use to argue against the EMU (Economic and Monetary Union), which she wanted no part of.
Basically, she outlined the problems with the euro perfectly, that Germany would chafe at the inevitable need for greater inflation, and that the poorer countries would inevitably be uncompetitive and need bailouts that would not easily be forthcoming.
This story reminds me of an old Milton Friedman quote: “Everything we know in economics we teach in Econ 1, and everything else is made up.”
Thatcher knew her Econ 1, and applied it perfectly to her understanding of Continental politics.
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