I knew that I would want to talk about Garret’s Europe, and ours. One way of narrating Garret’s life is as a sequence of rail, sea and air timetables as if he was determined to verify that the trains, ships and planes really did work on time.
It is worth remembering that the Union on this side of the Atlantic was built over almost 250 years, and it took 150 years to establish a central bank. The EU is 60 years old, and the euro, only 13. Over recent years, the euro area has taken big steps forward to reinforce its framework for fiscal and macroeconomic governance.