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The Euro
Dizer writes: "Today sees the historic introduction of the new European Currency (Euro) into European hands. The Eurozone market, with a population
of 300 million people, will be cashing in their Punts, Francs and Deutschmarks in favour of the new common Euro currency. This is the biggest currency transition in history, vive l'Europe! See stories on
ireland.com or the BBC."
Not really, before the euro, the deutchmark was the most stable currency. Remember 199x (x < 5), when the British pound was forced out of the EMU (monetary union) by Soros (amongst others). At that time, which was not too far in the past, the pound was the weakest currency, a state they shared with the Italian lire.
Ahem, Ireland is part of the Euro Zone...
The UK was EuroSceptic and opted out. But the attitude seems to be changing...
The countries partaking in the Euro:
The official (non-responding) Euro website: http://www.euro.ecb.int/
--
Ehm... I'm not very creative
I think it's alt+numeric 0128: Yup :-)
The Republic of Ireland, home to the Irish Times, gained independence in 1945, and has (until today) used its own independent current (the punt) since. Northern Ireland is still part of the UK.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Last I checked Norway was NOT on the list (and proud of it)- they didn't join the EU- probably because they can do whatever they want with just a few million people to share all that North Sea oil (they have several thousand "dollars" of oil per person sitting in reserve). The rest of the Scandanavian countries are also conspicously missing (no one actually considers Finland to be Scandanavian).
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
The coins of the different countries have different pictures on their back. Follow this link for an overview of the back sides of the euro coins.
It doesnt have an ASCII value ignore the nitwits below you, as ASCII is only 7 bits (127 characters maximum), and theyre giving you the Windows-specific 8-bit value 128. For example, on Macintosh, it has a different location: 219 (Option-shift-2).
Its Unicode value is 0x20AC, which is a standard. It can be written as € in HTML/XML, or € for the few browsers that support the symbolic name (mine doesnt seem to).
Liberty in your lifetime
For those of you lucky enough to be running Debian, it was announced yesterday that Euro support is available. The announcement is here: http://www.debian.org/News/2001/20011231p ort/
And the HOWTO is here: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-euro-sup
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
/* FIXME: insert some clever comment about this brilliant HOWTO and mention how useful it is */
Debian Euro HOWTO
Order is for idiots, geniuses can handle chaos!
Here is another official site with plenty of info and images.
Your perception that some currencies are weak/strong is wrong.
THe member countries of the Euro have had their currencies locked together for at least a year now (I think more than that, but I don't know for sure). Their values relative to each other, do not flucuate at all. Money markets have been trading the Euro for a long time now; it's only the presence of the physical cash that is changing today.
The whole point is that the member countries move together, not separately. Due to the nature of the Euro, it CANNOT devaluate in one country and not another. As for goods/services, yes, of course... it's still supply/demand.
Withiin the EU, people can travel, work and live in other countries, etc... It's becoming a large customs zone, where once you are in, you are free to move about as you please. You'll notice your first stop in an EU country when going to europe, you will have to clear customs. After that, you are relatively free.. you may have to show a passport, but that's it.
I read an article on Reuters some days ago. Maker of such machines are aware of that and tested their machine with the bath coin. They said it was rejected 99 times out of 100.
Guvf vf abg n EBG zrffntr
See the HOWTO:
Google.
New things are always on the horizon
€ is preferably expressed using the HTML character escape "€". Browsers back to at least Netscape 4 understand this. Use of the HTML escape is preferable to using a character code greater than 128, which is font-dependent. Most current HTML editors, like Dreamweaver, will insert "€" from the "insert symbol" menu, rather than using a character code greater than 128.
Sorry, forgot the link: The euro sign in HTML and in some other contexts
As a Briton, even I would have to say that the D-mark was the strongest currency in the EU by FAR, possibly with Sterling coming second. In purely economic terms, Germany outranks the UK easily. Go ask the OECD, UK and France are fairly even with Italy and Spain next. For comparison purposes, the Spanish economy is around the same size as Mexico's. If you think of European states as you would American ones, then Germany, the UK and France all outrank California or NY.
That was classic intercourse!
No, no, no. Don't calculate back to pesetas, francs and guilders for the rest of your natural lifes.
Write down twenty things that you often buy: a weeks worth groceries, CDs, DVDs, whatever. Write down a resonable price in your old currency. Convert. Learn and remember the new decent euro price.
Instead of calculating back to guilders whenever I buy a DVD, I will have remembered that ?25 to ?30 is a reasonable price. That is by far the easiest way to get used to the new currency.
Well.. I'll (almost) pass on the Argentina situation. Argentina does not have the US dollar as a currency. Indeed, it is considering 'dollarisation' where it does adapt the dollar as a currency. Right now, it has a currency board with insufficient reserves to support its chosen exchange rate with the US$ given:
(1) Argentina's budget deficit
(2) its large (private) US dollar borrowings, and
(3) modest US$ export earnings
In this situation, Argentina becomes a sitting duck for currency speculators. Irrespective of the 'true' value of the peso, it is near impossible to maintain the value of the currency. Add in a crazy political situation (most of the public sector deficit in Argentina is from *local* government - where politicans are from different political parties to central government, and hence much to gain from embarassing the central government...). Result, chaos. And that's even before a long running recession, supply-side inefficencies, etc.
Back to Europe.
There is an economics theory called 'optimal currency zones' which makes much the same case you do: how can the central bank pursue a coherent monetary (ie interest rate) policy, when the different countries that make up Europe have such different economies?
We don't know.
Only experience will tell. But one thing seems forgotten: the US has widely differing economic areas. How closely correlated are tobacco farming in Virginia, car manufacturing in Detroit, optical networking in San Francisco and investment banking in Wall Street? When car making is suffering from Japanese competition, it might seem to make sense to devalue the Detroit dollar - yet no-one has ever suggested breaking the US into regional currencies.
And the advantages of a single currency are huge: greater price transparency for consumers, lower inflation from greater competition, lower long-term interest rates, etc.
Most importantly of all: work or not, <b>everyone</b> should hope the Euro is a success. Neither the US, the UK, nor Asia will benefit from an economically weak Europe.
And I'm really looking forward to getting hold of my first Euro notes and coins when I go to France on Friday!
--- My dad's political betting
To think Ireland would use a different currency than the rest of the U.K.
Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom. It's straightforward:
Ireland is a nation. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a nation. This was formed for seperate nations, principalities, and provinces - England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Most of Ireland left, leaving Northern Ireland. Meanwhile Great Britain is an island, which contains most of, but not all, of Scotland, England and Wales. Ireland is also an island, but doesn't only contain Ireland. The British Isles is an archipeligo, which contains Great Britain and all the smaller islands that go to make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Ireland, and the Isle of Man. The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but is a dependancy. The Isle of Man is in the Irish Sea. The Channel Islands are not part of the British Isles, but are dependancies like the Isle of Man.
Eeeh... maybe you are confusing the fact that the European Central bank hasits headquarters in Frankfurt?
There is no national control over the Euro the European Central bank is an instution that has decisiomakers of all Euro coutries in its boards. The current president of the European central bank is Wim Duisenberg. He is not German he's Dutch. When Wim retires a Frenchmen will take his place.
For a US comperisson which US state controls mr Greenspan. Which US state contols the dollar?
And sorry to burst your bubble but the UK's economy has been in trouble ever since the end of WW II and the German economy (even after the reunification) is far stronger than the UK's. Whats more the UK is fat becomming the low wage, little taxation little unuion infuence country ofdf Europe (thank the near bankrupt Torries for that).
BTW, the names of the actual major islands in the British Isles are "Britannia" and "Hibernia".
:-).
Hibernia presently has 2 nations on it - The "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" and "Eire" (The Republic of Ireland).
Britannia has 3 nations on it - Scotland, Wales, and England, together known, rather grandly, as "Great Britain".
Note that up until the 10th century, confusingly, the nation on Hibernia was called "Scota Major", often mistranslated as Scotland, and the nation presently called Scotland was "Scota Minor". This situation arose because some of the ancestors of the present-day Irish living on Hibernia, the Scot Gaels, invaded Britannia and settled in Scotland (alternately killing/displacing/marrying, the previous inhabitants, the Picts). So, while the English later invaded Hibernia and inflicted Northern Ireland on the Irish, the Irish had already inflicted Scotland on the English...
Because of the internal divisions in the Conservative (Tory) party.
The history is that the Major government took over from Thatcher after she had been governing the country for 11 years and had become amazingly unpopular. The economy was in a mess and headed for a recession, people were fed up with crackpot schemes such as the poll tax, unemployment was high and the public services were collapsing. In many ways the 1992 election was similar to the 2000 US election, the right won an election that on all political calculations they should have lost. But they did so on a minority of the vote and with a very small majority in the Commons.
One of the reasons Thatcher had become unpopular in the party was that she had become anti-European and had refused to countenance going into the then ERM, a currency board that predated the Euro. When Major as Chancellor finally persuaded Thatcher to let him take the country in the pound was unrealistically high. This then led in part to the economic crisis that would peak a few years later in 1993. a bunch of speculators led by Goerge Sorros realised that HMG could not sustain the pound at its then level in the ERM, it was simply unsustainable. But Major and co refused to countenance a devaluation. Finaly the markets won and the pound fell out of the ERM. This had the immediate effect of ending the recession caused by an over-valued pound. The cost however was the Major government's credibility since they had spent $20 billion trying to sustain the higher level - equivalent to the cost of running the air force at the time.
The longer term effect was that a sizable faction in the Tory party began to use anti-Europeanism as a means to snipe at Major. A hard core of about a dozen rebels lost the party whip, but they had a large number of sympathisers. More importantly they were better organized in the constituency parties which are typically racist and reactionary.
In the 1997 election the Tory party was virtually anahilated, loosing 200 seats. That is their worst performance since universal suffrage. As always in the UK the MPs to loose their seats were the ones in the most marginal constituencies. These were also by and large the ones that were industrial rather than agricultural and as a result the ones most likely to have Europhile MPs.
By 1997 there was no prospect of the UK entering the Euro in the first wave even thought the pragmatic Blair administration supported the idea. That meant that there was no prospect of entering in that parliament. By now the Tory party was virulently opposed to the Euro and had made it practically their only campaign issue. If there was a referendum and the Tory party was to win a No vote it could easily allow the Tories to recover their lost momentum, possibly winning the next election. The political cost of negotiating to enter the Euro was consequently high and the benefit negligible since it could not be completed in one parliament.
The political calculation at this point is rather different. It now makes little difference whether the UK joins in 2003 or 2008, having missed the opportunity to set the ground rules the UK might as well watch what happens. The current Euro exchange rate is absurdly low and so a more equitable exchange rate to the pound and dollar is likely to sort itself out. It is likely that HMG will choose that moment to declare some form of currency peg. Over time the peg will become more permanent leading eventually to the UK entering the Euro.
The political advantage to doing so early remains low, the cost high. This is particularly so since 60% of the UK media market is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, an Austrailian with no particular concern for the UK or its inhabitants but a considerable and justified fear of the European Union curtailing his ambitions through anti-monopoly (trust) regulation.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Britannia has 3 nations on it - Scotland, Wales, and England, together known, rather grandly, as "Great Britain". Rather grandly? Great Britain is so-named because it derives from "Grand Bretagne" which distinguishes it from "Bretagne" proper in the Norman mind and tongue. It may not be considered so now, but England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland were all taken by the Normans.
That was classic intercourse!
The exchanges and markets have been working in Euros for the last year. This makes a unified market within the Euro-zone countries. However, until we had a real currency, there was a crisis of confidence.
I duely went out and got my 20DM worth of Euro coins in December. This was part of the so-called familiarity and to try to front-load the system to help with the problem of small change.
A couple of days ago, I had a guy at a bookshop at Frankfurt airport try to pass me off with two 10 year old banknotes of a withdrawn design. I objected because the notes could only be changed at a bank, and he gave me modern notes. The old bank notes were in very good condition and probably genuine, but I still refused.
Well I was out last night, spending Deutschmarks in a pub all night. Did I rush out to get my Euros, no as I anticipated a queue at the cash-points. I stayed away from the ECB because I didn't like the crush.
In the morning, I noted that the region transport company, the RMV seemed to have a lot of ticket machines out of order. However, I was able to get money from an ATM w/o queueing and without problem.
We are relatively lucky in that the exchange rate is set close enough to 2 at 1.95583. However, the retailers have been given a little too much leeway in setting their prices, so there is a lot of retail price inflation (already apparent during December). In France, they introduced a price freeze for three months to prevent this.
In real terms, it will probably start being useful on my next ski-trip. No more currencies to worry about apart from the Swiss Franc, and already, some resorts in Switzerland are saying that they will accept the Euro. Many have been taking Deutschmarks and French Franks already for things like lift-passes.
I expect that there may be some problems tomorrow when the first real business day for the shops starts, probably with availability of change as the public have practically none. Shops should give change in Euros, even if you spend DM.
See my journal, I write things there
"The key to making a vending machine work is the mechanism that figures out the value of the money you put in them. When you put coins into the machine, it runs a series of tests to find out the coins' dimensions, weight, electric properties, and magnetic properties. This enables it to figure out the denomination of the coin, and whether it is legal tender. The machine rejects coins that fail the tests."
I found this on a kid's site, but it does the best job of explaining the process quickly.
Allow me to direct you to a portion of Article VI of the Constitution:Please note where the Constitution is specifically the supreme law of the land, as well as the clause: anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. It's a longstanding priciple of the US Goverment that the Federal laws and Courts are supreme to all other laws and Courts in the nation. In fact, the United States fought a war over the issue of States rights over Federal rights. This debate goes back to the Articles of Confederation (and in fact originates well before) and continues to this day over the relative strengths of the State and Federal goverments.
Some examples:
In Holland we have a strained labour marked and quite a few Brits are working here, mainly in shipbuilding and industry.
And the Dutch construction industry has been trying to get unemployed German builders to come over but that's not easy due to quite different building practises and the exelent social security in Germany
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
ahem. The constitution explicitely states that any powers not explicitly granted to the federal government by the constitution in fact devolve to the state or local level, or to the people themselves.
The constitution does not grant the federal government the right to regulate or ban drug consumption, merely to regulate (or ban) its trade across state lines. If cannibis is grown in california and consumed in california, the federal government has no constitutional right to get involved. The matter is entirely subject to state law, which in California's case makes the medicinal use and consumption legal.
The constitution states that it is the supreme law of the land.
The constitution states that federal laws passwd in accordance to the constitution take precedence over state and local laws.
However, the constitution also states, as noted before, that laws only related to those powers explicitly granted the federal government may be passed. The drug laws, indeed the entire drug war, is unconstitutional. Unfortunately they are also popular. So, like the forced expulsion of the Mormons from Illinois for practicing an unpopular religion in the nineteenth century, and like the trail of tears (when the american indians were forced from their home by the executive branch and the president after winning their case before the supreme court) our government is simply doing what it often has in the face of widespread public complacency: ignoring the constitution completely.
The fact that the federal government routinely violates the constitution and tramples state and local rights should not be a surprise to anyone who has been watching the downward spiral of American politics over the last couple of decades. While the blatent contempt shown for the will of the people (the California law was passed as a public referendum) is perhaps surprising, it is IMHO but one of the more obvious signs that our government, particularly at the federal level, is of, by and for the special interests, primarilly those best funded, namely corporate interests, and that the will of the people plays little if any roll whatsoever. And how could it be otherwise, with widespread legalized bribery of congress and only two, equally corrupt, parties to choose from?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I think it's a really stupid idea, and will end in tears or war.
Economic integration is a strong factor in preventing wars, not starting them. Why invade another country when you can get its riches merely by trading? After WW2, the elite of the world got together and said "Never again!", and globalism was born.
With 300-million people on board, the EU will be able to go toe-to-toe with the US economy. As a US citizen, you will be mildly effected by this, as the world outside the US has become a little more competitive, and you, reciprocally, a little less so.
In response, the US has joined free-trade zone of the Organization of American States. This zone has a greater population than the (present) euro-zone, though, besides Canada with a relatively small population, the OAS includes mostly third-world and emerging nations with massive debts.
The long-term prospects for the EU are excellent.