Anybody remember the Euro? You know, the worlds biggest & bestest hard currency that was going to decimate the Dollar & generally humiliate Sterling – well that’s what the Reichsbank, Bank of Garlic & all those Eurotrash finance ministers had just all believing. So where exactly are we today? The major economies that constitute the Euro have all broken the terms of the laughably named, European Growth & Stability Pact & one or two Italian ministers are starting to talk about ditching Brussels’ flagship economic initative & wheeling out that paradigm of foreign exchange virtue, the Lira!

Whilst Italy's Finance Minister, Domenico Siniscalco, has been doing a little Latin tub thumping , insisting that "Italy's currency is the euro," membership of Europe’s financial elite (ho ho), hasn’t exactly done the spaghetti munchers any favours as their economy is now officially in recession but there’s nothing really new there, is there dear readers?

It seems that this time, the latest in a long & honourable line of Italian recessions isn’t as a result of sitting around all day, eyeing up the girls – no, this time its as a result of price rises that followed the introduction of the Euro. However, it is too sunny a day to worry about macro economics & accordingly, I hope you don’t mind it I leave you in the capable hands of Anatole Kaletsky

Nobody should be surprised that Europe’s politicians are in denial after their referendum defeats. Politicians are usually slow to understand truly historic events, especially when they involve economics. Remember John Major after Black Wednesday: Britain had not been ejected but “temporarily suspended” from the ERM? Politicians often behave like bad actors who find it impossibly difficult to deviate from their prepared and rehearsed scripts, even when the theatre is on fire.

Anyway, why should we care what Europe’s leaders are thinking? After all, Gerhard Schröder and Jacques Chirac are finished and so, presumably, is their concept of Europe. This may be true, but there is one important leader who still has a decent chance of re-election and who, significantly, has found a new catch-phrase: “It’s the euro, stupid.”

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