Former Deutschland Chancellor wants to united Europe, cites Britain as obstacle

The central bank doesnt control fiscal policy. That's pretty much the whole issue. The central bank is in charge of a single European monetary policy while the individual countries pursue their own fiscal policies. Also if you are suggesting that every country be able to pursue its own monetary policy, that isn't possible unless they end the Euro as a currency. As long as all of the eurozone sticks with a single currency, they cant have separate monetary policies.

 

Which is exactly why I said that, "Their central bank should have a hands off policy and allow the individual nations to change their fiscal policy to suit economic conditions within their own jurisdictions."

In other words, let the nations address regional economic issues with fiscal policy, and let the central bank keep a hands off approach as not to strain the economies of particular nations over regional economic matters.

 

I must admit that I haven't thought about this in any depth at all, but might it be a viable solution to have two currencies in a country (for practicality reasons to allow people to continue to pay with the Euro, but in parallel to have their own national currency, with a fluctuating exchange rate towards the Euro)? At least that way people would continue to have the perceived benefit of not being forced to exchange money when they travel to another country within the Euro zone.

Of course, that might be too tricky in daily life if the exchange rates fluctuate a lot, but I guess most merchants would at least allow people for quite some time to continue to pay in Euros at a very favorable exchange rate (for the merchants).

 

If the government let people do it, they would most assuredly do so. The problem is, they don't allow competition.