Feldstein on the Euro

At Project Syndicate, Martin Feldstein says the Euro was doomed from the start:

The attempt to establish a single currency for 16 separate and quite different countries was bound to fail. The shift to a single currency meant that the individual member countries lost the ability to control monetary policy and interest rates in order to respond to national economic conditions. It also meant that each country’s exchange rate could no longer respond to the cumulative effects of differences in productivity and global demand trends.

In addition, the single currency weakens the market signals that would otherwise warn a country that its fiscal deficits were becoming excessive. And when a country with excessive fiscal deficits needs to raise taxes and cut government spending, as Greece clearly does now, the resulting contraction of GDP and employment cannot be reduced by a devaluation that increases exports and reduces imports.