"Euro 'will be dead in five years'"

Euro 'will be dead in five years'

The euro will have broken up before the end of this Parliamentary term, according to the bulk of economists taking part in a wide-ranging economic survey for The Sunday Telegraph.

The single currency is in its death throes and may not survive in its current membership for a week, let alone the next five years, according to a selection of responses to the survey

...Of the 25 leading City economists who took part in the Telegraph survey, 12 predicted that the euro would not survive in its current form this Parliamentary term, compared with eight who suspected it would.

...the travails of Greece, Spain and Portugal in recent weeks, plus German Chancellor Angela Merkel's acknowledgement that the currency is facing an "existential crisis", have radically shifted opinion.

Two of the eight experts who predicted that the currency would survive said it would do so only at the cost of seeing at least one of its members default on its sovereign debt.

...Douglas McWilliams of the Centre for Economics and Business Research said the single currency "may not even survive the next week"...

...Tim Congdon of International Monetary Research said: "The eurozone will lose three or four members; Greece, Portugal, maybe Ireland and could break up altogether because of the growing friction between France and Germany."

Edmund Conway
Telegraph, June 5, 2010