Twin Sisters (2002) “De tweeling” (original title)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0322674/reviews?ref_=tt_ov_rt

Twin Views of Altered Lives: A Triumphant Film

Author: gradyharp from United States
29 September 2005
*** This review may contain spoilers ***

DE TWEELING (TWIN SISTERS), based on the highly successful novel by Tessa de Loo and adapted brilliantly for the screen by Marieke van der Pol, is assuredly one of the most touching films to date about the strength of family bonds decimated by the horrors of WW II. Director Ben Sombogaart follows Dutch writer de Loo’s lead in making this story about the differing fates of twin girls separated at the death of their parents more of a parallel tale than capitalizing on the grim reality of Hitler’s influence. The result is a cinematically magnificent, gently hued verismo style of film that succeeds even more in its impact than if it were constantly doused in the dark side of its subject.

Germany 1920. Lotte Bamberg (played by three actresses though a long life – child Julia Koopmans, young woman Thekla Reuten and aged woman Ellen Vogel) and Anna Bamberg (child Sina Richardt, young woman Nadja Uhl and aged woman Gudrun Okras) are inseparable twins at age six, living life to its fullest until suddenly both parents are gone and they are split up: the consumptive Lotte goes to live with her upper class Dutch aunt in Holland and the healthy Anna remains in Germany with her poor uncle on a pig farm. Lotte lives a life of privilege, recovers form tuberculosis, studies German at University and sings Schumann (‘Frauen Lieben und Leben’ appropriately!) accompanied by her soon to be husband David (Jeroen Spitzenberger) who happens to be Jewish. As the war threatens Hitler’s invasion on Holland, David is sent to Auschwitz and brokenhearted Lotte marries David’s kind brother and has a child. Meanwhile Anna leads an abused life on the poor and filthy farm, is beaten by her heinous uncle when she begins dating a young handsome Austrian Martin (Roman Knizka) and runs away to work as a maid. Martin believes in Socialism and joins Hitler’s army, and is killed.

Throughout the years of separation each twin writes to the other but their guardians for varying reasons never mail the letters. Anna finally finds Lotte and they have a brief time together in Lotte’s elegant surroundings. But when Anna observes German dinner guests berating Jews she flees. The two sisters find it difficult to separate the losses of their husbands: Lotte blames Anna’s siding with the Nazis as a cause of David’s death. Anna defends Martin’s role as one of idealism that had nothing to do with the genocide of the Jews. They part, seemingly to never meet again. But as old women bedraggled Anna seeks out the elegant Lotte and the two come to understand their opposite opinions of what the war did to destroy their happiness.

The entire cast is so fine that it is difficult to single any one actor out for distinction: this is truly ensemble acting. Never pushing the story to the edge of saccharine or excess of war violence, director Sombogaart keeps his focus on the dialogue between the sisters central, embroidered with the opposing dichotomies of class and political commitment visceral but understated. The cinematography of Piotr Kukla and the radiant musical score by Fons Merkies are astonishingly effective. This is one of the powerful movies about the Holocaust from an entirely different stance – one that grabs you by the heart and holds on for the 135 minutes of the film…and beyond. In Dutch, German and English with subtitles. Very Highly Recommended. Grady Harp

Nonsmokingladybug wrote in a comment to Oosterman Treats Blog yesterday the following:

” . . . . We streamed a movie on netflix called “De Tweeling” (Twin Sisters). Great movie, one of the foreign films that got awards her in the US. So worth watching, . . . . ”

Several scenes from that movie you can find on youtube.

Peter and I saw this movie several years ago. It is one of those movies that stay in one’s memory.

Path to Grexit tragedy paved by political incompetence

Author

Barry Eichengreen
Professor of Economics and Political Science at University of California, Berkeley

June 29, 2015 7.56am AEST

Many are ready to call it quits with the euro, but down that road lies nothing good. Reuters

Since our last episode, the crisis in Greece has escalated further. Negotiations between the government and its creditors collapsed over the weekend, and restrictions on bank withdrawals will now follow.

The next step is for the government to issue the equivalent of IOUs to pay salaries and pensions. The country is seemingly on the slippery slope to exiting the euro.

Many of us doubted that it would come to this. In particular, I doubted that it would come to this.

Nearly a decade ago, I analyzed scenarios for a country leaving the eurozone. I concluded that this was exceedingly unlikely to happen. The probability of a Grexit, or any Otherexit, I confidently asserted, was vanishingly small.

My friend and UC Berkeley colleague Brad DeLong regularly reminds us of the need to “mark our views to market.” So where did this prediction go wrong?

Why a euro exit didn’t make sense

My analysis was based on a comparison of economic costs and benefits of a country exiting the euro. The costs, I concluded, would be severe and heavily front-loaded.

Raising the possibility, however remote, of exit from the euro would ignite a bank run in said country. The authorities would be forced to shutter the financial system. Economic activity would grind to a halt. Losing access to not just their savings but also imported petrol, medicines and foodstuffs, angry citizens would take to the streets.

Not only would any subsequent benefits, by comparison, be delayed, but they would be disappointingly small.

With the government printing money to finance its spending, inflation would accelerate, and any improvement in export competitiveness due to depreciation of the newly reintroduced national currency would prove ephemeral.

In Greece’s case, moreover, there is the problem that the country’s leading export, refined petroleum, is priced in dollars and relies on imported oil, which is also priced in dollars. So much for the advantages of a depreciated currency.

Agricultural exports for their part will take several harvests to ramp up. And attracting more tourists won’t be easy against a drumbeat of political unrest.

What went wrong?

How did Greece end up in this pickle? Some say that the specter of a bank run was no longer a deterrent to exit once that bank run started anyway due to the deep depression into which the Greek economy had sunk.

But what is remarkable is how the so-called bank run remained a jog – it was still perfectly manageable until the Greek government called its referendum on the terms of the bail out deal offered by international creditors, negotiations broke down and exit became a real possibility.

Nonperforming loans — ones that are in default or close to it — were already rising, to be sure, but the banks still had all the liquidity they needed. The European Central Bank supported the Greek banking system with emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) right up to the very end of June. Only when Greece stopped negotiating did the Central Bank stop increasing ELA. And only then did a full-fledged bank run break out.

So I stand by the economic argument. Where I need to mark my views to market, however, is for underestimating the role of politics. In particular, I underestimated the extent of political incompetence – not just of the Greek government but even more so of its creditors.

In January Syriza had run on a platform of no more spending cuts or tax increases but also of keeping the euro. It should have anticipated that some compromise would be needed to square this circle. In the event, that realization was strangely late in coming.

And Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his government should have had the courage of its convictions. If it was unwilling to accept the creditors’ final offer, then it should have stated its refusal, pure and simple. If it preferred to continue negotiating, then it should have continued negotiating. The decision to call a referendum in midstream only heightened uncertainty. It was a transparent effort to evade responsibility. It was the action of leaders more interested in retaining office than in minimizing the cost to the country of the crisis.

A hard lesson learned

Still, this incompetence pales in comparison with that of the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF.

The three institutions opposed debt restructuring in 2010 when the crisis still could have been resolved at low cost. They continued to resist it in 2015, when a debt write-down was the obvious concession to Mr Tsipras & Company. The cost would have been small. Pretending instead that Greece’s debts could be repaid hardly enhanced their credibility.

Instead, the creditors first calculated the size of the primary budget surpluses that Greece would have to run in order to hypothetically repay its debt. They then required the government to raise taxes and cut spending sufficiently to produce those surpluses.

They ignored the fact that, in so doing, they consigned the country to an even deeper depression. By privileging their own balance sheets, they got the Greek government and the outcome they deserved.

The implication is clear. Never underestimate the ability of politicians to do the wrong thing. I will try to remember next time.

Why not Debt Relief?

Peter just contemplated what could be done to help Greece. He said, “why not debt relief?”

Then he cam across this article in The Guardian. It was already published in January this year. The writer, Jeffrey Sachs, is the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and author of ‘The Price of Civilization”.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/21/greece-profit-german-history-1953-debt-relief

Let Greece profit from German history

Jeffrey Sachs

The overwhelming truth about the Greek debt crisis is that it’s a massive distraction. Greece accounts for a mere 2% of the eurozone economy and the EU population. This doesn’t mean that Greece should be pushed around, still less pushed out of the eurozone. It means the very opposite: the crisis should be resolved, and largely on Greece’s terms.

The problem with a currency union is that seeds of doubt can destroy the economic area, if not the common currency. The euro is infected with doubt: will Greece remain? If Greece goes, will Portugal be next? And if they go, why not Spain, Italy, and who knows who else?

These doubts don’t just fester; they lead to capital flight that in turn aggravates the very doubts that prompted them. Greece’s precarious position in the eurozone long ago led to a withdrawal of funds from the Greek banks. The resulting illiquidity, in turn, pulled Greece into a near-fatal economic crisis. A more interventionist European Central Bank under Mario Draghi averted a crash, but the crisis hasn’t ever fully gone away. Several bailouts have been little more than patch-ups to get Greece through a few months at a time.

Anybody who does the Greek debt arithmetic (and it sometimes seems that in Berlin nobody actually does) knows that it cannot repay its external debts, now around 170% of GDP, without a level of pain that is simply beyond the tolerance of democratic societies. The leftwing party Syriza is no anomaly; it is telling the financial and political truth in the runup to Sunday’s elections, however unpleasant that may be to politicians in Berlin and Brussels.

John Maynard Keynes taught us this 96 years ago, after the Versailles treaty, in the The Economic Consequences of the Peace: “Will the discontented peoples of Europe be willing for a generation to come so to order their lives that an appreciable part of their daily produce may be available to meet a foreign payment, the reason of which … does not spring compellingly from their sense of justice or duty?” he asked.

And his answer: “In short, I do not believe that any of these tributes will continue to be paid, at the best, for more than a very few years. They do not square with human nature or agree with the spirit of the age.” Of course he was right, but only after disaster struck.

Some Germans today insist that a debt is a debt, and that Greece must repay in full. They should know better from their own history, starting with Keynes’s unsuccessful plea to lower Germany’s reparations burden. They should recall the relief that Germany was granted through the Marshall plan, and the 1953 London agreement on German debts. Did Germany “deserve” the relief in 1953? That was not the right question. Germany’s new democracy needed the relief, and Germany needed a fresh start. It played a major role in the economic recovery and construction of Germany’s democratic institutions.
Greece is resisting its creditors demands for even more austerity measures and reforms in Brussels tonight, as bailout talks go to the wire
We are, thank God, not in any great drama of a postwar settlement. Europe is rich, prosperous, and democratic. Yet French and German banks made too many loans to Greece a decade ago, and Goldman Sachs facilitated accounting legerdemain to hide the rapid buildup of Greece’s sovereign debt. Greece’s private creditors have already taken a deep haircut on the debt. The bigger challenge – and one that could be much more easily solved – is the debt owed to official creditors, sums that are large for Greece but very small for Europe.

Does Greece “deserve” the debt relief? Greek politicians behaved badly; so did German, French, and US banks; and so have many Greek tycoons who hid their wealth abroad, out of reach of the tax authorities.

Who “deserves” what remains a difficult question. Yet as with Germany in 1953, the proper question is whether Greece needs debt relief, and whether Germany and the other creditors should give it. On that the answer is unequivocal. The eurozone is heading either for a constructive debt-relief agreement or for a political crash with potential ramifications vastly larger than Greece.

The solution would not be difficult technically. Greece’s outstanding external debts should be restructured as very long-term loans at a fixed and low euro-interest rate, say 0.5% for the next five years, rising to 1% in the 2020s and beyond. Rather than pulling exact numbers out of the air, some straightforward debt arithmetic would help to identify a realistic trajectory for Greece’s recovery.

Debt relief will not solve Greece’s economic problems, but it would open the door to a solution. The real solution involves hard work by young Greeks to open new businesses and find new export markets, and for Europe as a whole to launch an investment-led recovery by building a new, smart, 21st-century European infrastructure – one that could, for example, enable Greece’s fabled Mediterranean sunshine and wind to provide some of Europe’s low-carbon energy needs. The first step is to stop the pain.

Uta’s Diary, July 2015

The other day we moved some furniture around. We decided that we could have both our computers in our little computer room. That way we would be close to each other while sitting at our computer tables. This little room is easy to heat. So we save up on heating expenses. For sure this is another bonus, especially now that we suffer such an arctic cold spell!

I love to add little slices of ginger to my ginger tea. It makes for a very good tasting, healthy and warm drink. I only need to cut off tiny, tiny bits of my lovely piece of ginger to make a wonderful drink! 🙂

Our camellia flowers seem to thrive in the cold weather:

Bulli Beach Cafe, July 2015

As we were waiting for the food buzzer to ring, we observed a few sparrows flying in and out of the restaurant space. Peter tried to catch them with the camera, however they always flew away too quickly to take a proper photo.

I was sneaky and took a picture of Peter as he entered the Cafe.

The special offer on one of the blackboards looked quite enticing. But the offer was for the evening. We had come just for a simple lunch. This was yesterday, Friday the 10th. Peter just tells me, “coldest weather is on its way”. I wonder, how much colder it can get. Isn’t it cold enough by now?

We took some seats inside and studied the menu. Breakfast was only till 11 am, and it was already well past 11. Then we discovered a section “breakfast all day”. Under this section we found some special offers.

I had chosen fresh fruit salad with yoghurt.

Peter had gone to pick up my salad and had to wait for the buzzer to ring to go and get what he had ordered. It did not take long and his huge 10 Dollar burger was ready to be picked up. We had asked for an extra: small

We thought the servings were very generous.

Later on I had a pot of Earl Grey tea and Peter had some coffee. We were very happy with our lunch. Earlier on we had already gone for a walk. We thought it was not too cold since there was absolutely no wind. Unfortunately there was no sun either. At least it did not rain.
We really enjoyed our little walk even though we both felt a little pain in our knees.

I took quite a few pictures. Here are some of them:

On arrival I took this picture before I got out of the car.

GCR (Global Catastrophic Risk Institute) News Summary June 2015

http://gcrinstitute.org/gcr-news-summary-june-2015/

Pope Francis issued an encyclical saying the natural environment is “the patrimony of all humanity” and calling for a “new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet”. Pope Francis warned that we are warming the planet, depleting its reserves of clean water, and destroying its biodiversity:

Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth. The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world. The effects of the present imbalance can only be reduced by our decisive action, here and now.

“Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years,” the encyclical said.

Lloyd’s of London released a report for the insurance industry on the risk of an “acute disruption of the global food supply” in the near future. The report said that because of population growth and changing consumption patterns in the developing world, food production will have to more than double by 2050 to keep pace with demand. As a result, the report said, “the global food system is under chronic pressure to meet an ever rising demand, and its vulnerability to acute disruptions is compounded by factors such as climate change, water stress, ongoing globalization and heightening political instability”.

The US is considering stationing tanks and heavy weapons in its Baltic and Eastern European members. NATO also announced it wouldincrease the size its response force to 40,000 troops, more than triple the previous number of troops. The move would be meant to signal the US’ readiness to defend newer member nations that are close to Russia. The US has never before stationed heavy military equipment in member nations that use to be in the Soviet sphere of influence. The move would go against NATO’s pledge in the 1997 Founding Act not to permanently station “substantial combat forces” in those countries.

Russian General Yury Yakubov said Russia would respond bystationing new heavy weapons of its own in the region. Russia later announced it would deploy 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) “capable of overcoming any, even the most technically sophisticated, missile defense systems”. “The nuclear messaging of Russia is destabilizing, it’s unjustified, and it’s dangerous,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. “It should scare people,” former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder added. “Now we are in a situation where it’s not inconceivable that there might be a military confrontation, and this kind of bluster contributes to the possibility of miscalculation.”

Fiona Hill and Steven Pifer wrote in The New York Times that NATO and Russia need to work together to reduce the risk of escalation from military encounters. The Russian military has been engaging recently in a greater number provocative close encounters with the militaries and civilians of other countries. Although there are Cold War agreements designed to reduce the chance of escalation, they do not cover the entire range of possible encounters between Russia and NATO countries. “Limiting the risks of miscalculation between NATO and Russian military units would seem to be a no-brainer,” Hill and Pifer wrote. “No one wants an accidental war. But, given Mr. Putin’s desire to intimidate the West, would the Kremlin permit such a dialogue to go forward?”

NASA and the NSA agreed to work together to keep comets and asteroids large enough to threaten cities or cause a global catastrophe from hitting Earth. The two agencies have studied the threat separately, but the agreement should improve their joint ability to respond to threats from extraterrestrial objects. Advocates for better planetary defense declared June 30 “Asteroid Day” to mark the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska Event, when a large meteor exploded over the Siberian taiga with about 1,000 times the energy of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

NASA Goddard research scientist Neel Savani developed a model for predicting a day in advance how coronal mass ejections will affect the Earth’s magnetosphere. When coronal mass ejections—clouds of charged particles emitted by the sun—are aligned the wrong way, they cause geomagnetic storms that can damage satellites and power lines. Right now there is no way to predict more than an hour in advance whether a coronal mass ejection will cause a serious storm. But if Savani’s model is sufficiently robust, it could be used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) to warn military forces, airlines, and utility companies before major storms occur.

Although the number of new cases of Ebola have fallen slightly, the disease is not much closer to eradication in Guinea and Sierra Leone. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International President Joanne Liu criticized the G7 countries for not doing more to prepare for the next serious epidemic. Liu said that while World Health Organization (WHO) should have responded to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa more decisively, WHO member states did not take enough responsibility for the slow response. Liu also said that improving disease surveillance is not enough. “Despite not having complete data,” Liu said. “We still had enough to know that we had to scale up our response.” Liu added that countries need to be rewarded rather than punished for declaring an outbreak. The low-income countries that are most vulnerable to outbreaks of infectious diseases are also the countries that are hurt the most by travel bans and trade declines. “The reality today is if Ebola were to hit on a scale it did in August and September, we would hardly do much better than we did the last time around,” Liu said.

This news summary was put together in collaboration withAnthropocene. Thanks to Tony Barrett, Seth Baum, Kaitlin Butler, andGrant Wilson for help compiling the news.

Tagged with biodiversity, climate change, ebola, food security, geomagnetic storms, inadvertent nuclear war, insurance, pandemic disease outbreak, planetary defense, pope francis, US-Russia nuclear war, water security

This post was written by Robert de Neufville

My Website »

Robert de Neufville has degrees in political science and political theory from Harvard and Berkeley. Robert is an associate of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, which was recently covered in Quartz.

It’s now Greece’s crisis, not the Greek crisis

http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/its-now-greeces-crisis-not-the-greek-crisis-20150707-gi6um2.html

It’s now Greece’s crisis, not the Greek crisis

Date: July 7, 2015 – 2:06PM

Michael Pascoe

BusinessDay contributing editor

View more articles from Michael Pascoe

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It might seem pedantic, but there’s a big difference between what was the Greek crisis and what’s now Greece’s crisis.

When Greece’s massive debt hit the fan five years ago as the result of dumb bankers being blind to industrial-scale tax evasion, grandiose government spending and insanely indulgent social security topped by widespread rorting, it was the Greek crisis that quickly morphed into the PIGS or PIIGS crisis – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain.

In any event, there’s a strong case made for Greece being better off by in effect declaring bankruptcy and leaving the euro zone.

When markets were panicking then, most of the Greek debt was owed to banks. The possibility of Greek default threatened Europe’s banks with a contagion effect that would have spread through the world.

As Band-Aids were applied to Athens and various half-hearted promises were made about reform, there were plenty of commentators suggesting that Greece’s debt could not be fixed. Even with bond holders taking a sharp haircut, the debt was simply too large for the little Greek economy to work its way out from under – and that was without the impact of greater austerity.

But the refinancing and emergency funds weren’t really about solving the Greek debt problem. They were about kicking the Greek can down the road until the threat of contagion was contained, until the other PIIGS members were stabilised, and most of the Greek debt was transferred from banks that couldn’t handle the loss to institutions that could.

Five years later, it is primarily Greece’s crisis, rather than the Greek crisis. There are still concerns of course – markets are all interconnected and don’t like uncertainty, fear is a reason for international investors to seek what they consider is relative safety – but it’s now Greece that is doomed to suffer most of the pain whatever deal is done or not done in Brussels.

It is a big, colourful story that is getting disproportionate play here, partly because of the large Greek population in Australia, partly because the idea of Western country’s banks being closed and cash rationed is rather frightening. Barring some institutional catastrophe, there are almost no economic links between Australia and Greece that matter.

Indeed, much of the story is being covered from the social and political angles rather than the economic. The protests, the genuine tales of people suffering a slide back to Second World status, the dramatic politics make good television. And in some quarters, the idea of a brave left-wing government taking on the evil capitalists stirs hearts. . . . .

To read on please go to the above link.

Uta’s Diary, July 2015

On the first of July Peter and I drove up MacQuarie Pass. It was a cold, but beautiful sunny day. On reaching the highlands, we took the tourist road. Our destination was the cafe of the Bradman Museum where we were to meet our blogger friends. We arrived early and ordered already some refreshments.

The pumpkin muffin was huge and we shared it. It tasted yummy. Our tea arrived in pots. It was leaf tea with milk on the side. Very nice! Our friends soon arrived and ordered some refreshments too. Sorry, we have no more pictures from that day. It was lovely, to meet our blogger friends in person, and we hope to see them soon again.

The Entrance to the cafe, which was heated pleasantly.

Peter took all the pictures with his mobile phone.

A warm, savoury pumpkin muffin with butter.

From Wikipedia: Eurozone

Eurozone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurozone

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The eurozone, officially called the euro area, is a monetary union of 19 of the 28 European Union (EU) member states which have adopted the euro (€) as their common currency and sole legal tender. The other 9 members of the European Union continue to use their own national currencies.

The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. Other EU states (except for Denmark and the United Kingdom) are obliged to join once they meet the criteria to do so. No state has left, and there are no provisions to do so or to be expelled. Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City have formal agreements with the EU to use the euro as their official currency and issue their own coins. Kosovo and Montenegro have adopted the euro unilaterally, but these countries do not officially form part of the eurozone and do not have representation in the European Central Bank (ECB) or in the Eurogroup.

The ECB, which is governed by a president and a board of the heads of national central banks, sets the monetary policy of the zone. The principal task of the ECB is to keep inflation under control. Though there is no common representation, governance or fiscal policy for the currency union, some co-operation does take place through the Eurogroup, which makes political decisions regarding the eurozone and the euro. The Eurogroup is composed of the finance ministers of eurozone states, but in emergencies, national leaders also form the Eurogroup.

Since the financial crisis of 2007–08, the eurozone has established and used provisions for granting emergency loans to member states in return for the enactment of economic reforms. The eurozone has also enacted some limited fiscal integration, for example in peer review of each other’s national budgets. The issue is political and in a state of flux in terms of what further provisions will be agreed for eurozone reform.

Main article: Enlargement of the eurozone

Nine countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) are EU members but do not use the euro. Before joining the eurozone, a state must spend two years in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM II). As of 2015, the National Central Bank (NCB) of Denmark participates in ERM II.

Denmark and the United Kingdom obtained special opt-outs in the original Maastricht Treaty. Both countries are legally exempt from joining the eurozone unless their governments decide otherwise, either by parliamentary vote or referendum. Sweden, which joined the EU in 1995 after the Maastricht Treaty was signed, is required to join the eurozone under the terms of its accession treaty as soon as it fulfils the convergence criteria, which include being part of ERM II for two years. However, the Swedish people turned down euro adoption in a 2003 referendum and since then the country has intentionally avoided fulfilling the adoption requirements by not joining ERM II, which is voluntary.

Interest in joining the eurozone increased in Denmark, and initially in Poland, as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. In Iceland, there was an increase in interest in joining the European Union, a pre-condition for adopting the euro. However, by 2010 the debt crisis in the eurozone caused interest from Poland, as well as the Czech Republic, to cool. Lithuania adopted the euro in 2015.

Non-member usage

Further information: International status and usage of the euro

Eurozone participation
19 European Union member states in the eurozone

7 European Union member states not in ERM II but obliged to join once convergence criteria are met

1 European Union member state in ERM II, with an opt-out (Denmark)

1 European Union member state not in ERM II, with an opt-out (United Kingdom)

4 non-European Union member states using the euro with a monetary agreement (Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican City)

2 non-European Union member states using the euro unilaterally (Kosovo and Montenegro)
he euro is also used in countries outside the EU. Four states – Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City — have signed formal agreements with the EU to use the euro and issue their own coins. Nevertheless, they are not considered part of the eurozone by the ECB and do not have a seat in the ECB or Euro Group.

Kosovo[g] and Montenegro officially adopted the euro as their sole currency without an agreement and, therefore, have no issuing rights. These states are not considered part of the eurozone by the ECB. However, sometimes the term eurozone is applied to all territories that have adopted the euro as their sole currency. Further unilateral adoption of the euro (euroisation), by both non-euro EU and non-EU members, is opposed by the ECB and EU.

Expulsion and secession

Further information: Greek withdrawal from the eurozone

Although the eurozone is open to all EU member states to join once they meet the criteria, the treaty is silent on the matter of states leaving the eurozone, neither prohibiting nor permitting it. Likewise there is no provision for a state to be expelled from the euro.[33] Some, however, including the Dutch government, favour such a provision being created in the event that a heavily indebted state in the eurozone refuses to comply with an EU economic reform policy.[34] Jens Dammann has argued that even now EU law contains an implicit right for member states to leave the eurozone if they no longer meet the criteria that they had to meet in order to join the eurozone.

The outcome of leaving the euro would vary depending on the situation. If the country’s own replacement currency was expected to devalue against the euro, the state might experience a large-scale exodus of money, whereas if the currency were expected to appreciate then more money would flow into the economy. A rapidly appreciating currency would be detrimental to the country’s exports.

One problem is that if Greece were to replace the euro with a new currency, this cannot be achieved very quickly. Banknotes must be printed for example, which takes up to six months. The changeover would likely require bank deposits be converted from euros to the new devalued currency. The prospect of this could lead to currency leaving the country and people withdrawing cash, causing a bank run and necessitating capital controls.

Administration and representation

Further information: European Central Bank, Eurogroup and Euro summit

The European Central Bank (seat in Frankfurt depicted) is the supranational monetary authority of the eurozone.

Euro Group President Jeroen Dijsselbloem
The monetary policy of all countries in the eurozone is managed by the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Eurosystem which comprises the ECB and the central banks of the EU states who have joined the eurozone. Countries outside the eurozone are not represented in these institutions. Whereas all EU member states are part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). Non EU member states have no say in all three institutions, even those with monetary agreements such as Monaco. The ECB is entitled to authorise the design and printing of euro banknotes and the volume of euro coins minted, and its president is currently Mario Draghi.

The eurozone is represented politically by its finance ministers, known collectively as the Eurogroup, and is presided over by a president, currently Jeroen Dijsselbloem. The finance ministers of the EU member states that use the euro meet a day before a meeting of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (Ecofin) of the Council of the European Union. The Group is not an official Council formation but when the full EcoFin council votes on matters only affecting the eurozone, only Euro Group members are permitted to vote on it.

Since the global financial crisis of 2007–08, the Euro Group has met irregularly not as finance ministers, but as heads of state and government (like the European Council). It is in this forum, the Euro summit, that many eurozone reforms have been decided upon. In 2011, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy pushed for these summits to become regular and twice a year in order for it to be a ‘true economic government’.

In April 2008 in Brussels, Juncker suggested that the eurozone should be represented at the International Monetary Fund as a bloc, rather than each member state separately: “It is absurd for those 15 countries not to agree to have a single representation at the IMF. It makes us look absolutely ridiculous. We are regarded as buffoons on the international scene.” However Finance Commissioner Joaquín Almunia stated that before there is common representation, a common political agenda should be agreed upon.

The Real Cause of Greece’s Economic Crisis

Today I came across this 2011 film review. Maybe it explains a bit more about what led to the crisis in Greece. Thanks for reblogging it, Stuart. I am going to reblog it now.

The Most Revolutionary Act

Debtocracy

(2011) Katerina Kitidi and Aris Hatzistefanou

Film Review

The 2011 Greek documentary Debtocracy effectively dispels the media myths about lazy Greek workers and and scofflaw Greek taxpayers being responsible for Greece’s present economic crisis.

The film begins with an overview of what its filmmakers (and I) feel has been a basic goal of both globalization and the creation of a single European currency – namely “labor discipline” and the suppression of wages in heavily unionized countries.

They show how sweeping deregulation in the industrialized world in the 1980s allowed manufacturers to eliminate unions by shutting plants down and reopening them as sweatshops in the third world. The subsequent creation of the Euro as a single currency allowed the central European countries (Germany and France) to use the mechanism of debt to weaken strong unions in peripheral Eurozone countries like Greece, Spain and Italy.

Thanks to relatively weak unions following…

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