A testament to this is that the broad momentum of euro area and EU accession has not been halted by the crisis. Since the start of the crisis three EU Member States – Slovakia, Estonia  4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  and Latvia – have adopted the euro or are about to do it.
Their blossoms come into full bloom every spring so as to make us feel eternal peace and serenity, regardless of economic cycles, market swings, and in particular, financial crises. Alan Greenspan once described the “Lehman Crisis of 2008” as a “once-in-a-century type event”.1 And now we are facing the “Eurozone Crisis of 2011”.