If you compare what happened in the United States and what happened in the euro area – given the nature of the national problems in Europe, with fiscal unsustainability in some countries, with market speculation and so on – what you had after the global financial crisis was a significant period of austerity in Europe.
For a moment, I want to go back to research on the economic arguments for – and against creating a monetary union. In the 1960s, a group of researchers – following the pioneering contributions of Mundell, Kenen and McKinnon started posing a crucial question: from a purely economic point of view, what is the optimal area for a single currency?