Its probably worth pointing out , since we,ve got onto USA and USE that the introduction of a common currency for a group of countries ( as with euo) was probably biggest financial experiment ever. It was first time it had ever been done between non federated states. That single action is probably responsible for many difficulties eu now faces.
A country wide common value currency was not introduced in USA until 1914, with introduction of federal reserve and bank. Even though states had been "United" for years, individual states issued and printed their own currency and established its value between states prior to 1914 . A dollar issued in NewYork state could be of different value to one in California....eu in its wisdom introduced euro before federation and had no mechanics in place for countries to alter its relative value, fine for Germany, France but disastrous for Greece This is probably responsible for many of the poorer countries ( in euro) financial problems now but many poirer coutries were bribed into euro with debts written off and low interest loans.
The federation should have come before the euro, UK economists said as much 15 years ago.
What I,m saying is the eu was not ready for euro, but still went ahead and introduced it.It still isn't ready now.
Does eu really know what its doing ? Ask Greece and Spain.
In effect eu was trying to behave as if it was a country without a " national" bank and was plainly neither a country or even united. Probably totally OT but ???
Probably somebody is thinking what difference does that make
Well imagine a crisis in Alabama, that state has security of federal reserve,federal guards,FBI and USA armed forces to call on. Its their duty to bail Alabama out, come what may. Now take the crisis in Greece. They go cap in hand to Merkel, eu or IMF and get told to accept austerity, pay their taxes or give sovereignty of their islands to Germany for help. ???
That's our wonderful eu, it simply does not have the infrastructure,finances or financial clout to be a federation.
Getting it to point of being capable of above is way beyond the cost countries would be willing to hand over or could even afford, and that's before we look into the politics of handing control over so we could get there.