Devaluation is not an option because of the common currency.

The common currency is now looked at with suspicion.

Now we have awakened to an existential crisis for the common currency.

The general feeling was that the common currency was doomed.

This is no way to secure the future of the single currency.

Even before it was born, some economists (such as myself) asked whether a single currency would be desirable for such a heterogeneous group of countries.

More realistically, advocates of a single currency reasoned that it would cause people to identify as Europeans, and that the shift to a single European Central Bank would herald a shift of power away from national governments.

Yet, despite the difficulties that have bedeviled the CFA (and the euro of late) indeed, despite the absence of viable regional customs unions (except in the East African Community), let alone a single market Africans retain a strong allegiance to the idea of a currency union.

A common currency requires unified and centrally agreed monetary and fiscal policies.

The case for capital market integration, and then for a single currency, was similar.

Greece benefited from a common currency, unified capital markets, and free trade with other EU member states.

There have, of course, been many examples in history in which currency unions or single currency states have broken up.

No one doubts that Germany and most other eurozone members would prefer the single currency to continue.

They want to end the common currency, because, in their view, it is undermining the European ideal.

The common currency is the canary in the mine of the global exchange rate system.

For meaningful burden sharing to work, however, eurozone leaders must stop dreaming that the single currency can survive another 20 or 30 years without much greater political union.

LONDON Eurozone policymakers and politicians are in no doubt they have done their part to support the currency union s struggling members by increasing the size of its rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

First, there is no substitute for timely and coordinated action when the single currency is under pressure.

The convergence of sovereign debt yields implied and required by the establishment of the common currency need not return.

Further, two of the territories under review of the Special Committee share our common Eastern Caribbean currency.

In reality, of course, a single currency or fixed exchange rate is not needed for trade to flourish.

Perhaps the same is true of the single currency, which will derive strength and validation from the challenges that it overcomes.

Since the single currency was France s condition for accepting German reunification, Germany played along.

The Nobel laureate Robert Mundell laid out the conditions under which a single currency could work.

As a result, investors and depositors have learned that the erection of financial barriers within the currency area is indeed a genuine risk.

The final question is what such a eurozone banking union would mean for the single financial market, and especially for EU countries that are outside the single currency.

Indeed, without the single currency, many of these countries would have succumbed to a downward spiral of devaluation, default, and recourse to the IMF.

Perhaps one could interpret the common currency as forcing eventual convergence in policies.

Indeed, in the extreme, some countries could find themselves considering whether to leave the single currency altogether.

Thatcher supported Britain s entry into the European Union in order to benefit from free trade, but she forcefully opposed joining the single currency.

Regional groups of countries in eastern, southern, and western Africa are all giving priority to the idea of creating a monetary union.

It would be a delusion to imagine that the eurozone need only follow its current path to ensure the single currency s future.

Yet, despite all this, Lukashenko manages to avoid implementing economic projects profitable to Russia (i.e., a single currency).

European believers insist that the single currency is really founded on the strong political will to secure eternal peace in Europe.

The euro s survival in 2012 if only by the skin of its teeth confounded skeptics who forecast Greece s exit from the eurozone and the single currency s collapse by the end of the summer.

Later, Maurice Obstfeld pointed out that, in addition to fiscal transfers, a currency union needs clearly defined rules for the lender of last resort.

But only Europe s currency union faces uncertainty about its future America faces no existential crisis for its currency.

The Maastricht Treaty established a monetary union, but the political union that is an indispensable precondition for the common currency s success remained a mere promise.

Many European leaders believe that the rest of the world owes the eurozone a bailout because the currency union is just an innocent bystander.

Europe now faces a difficult choice either fix this fundamental design flaw and move toward fiscal union, or abandon the common currency.

The longer the crisis continues, the more obvious it becomes that the common currency and the ECB alone are not enough to defend the Common Market and European integration.

Indeed, the danger of a euro implosion or a potential exit from the common currency may prove to be sufficiently strong arguments to persuade a majority of Europeans to vote yes.

As time passes, the coming of the single currency and the way that the euro has been implemented is generating more and more unease.

Can Europe s common currency survive? No less a figure than former United States Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has now declared that it cannot.

In addition, the single currency weakens the market signals that would otherwise warn a country that its fiscal deficits were becoming excessive.