And indeed, it is well known that global growth in recent years has been supported by emerging markets, at a time when several advanced economies were mired in post-crisis balance sheet recessions. To my mind, however, this is not a sustainable global growth model as it relies, as I said, on a fallacy of composition.
Demand for euro banknotes is largely linked to how foreign users assess the stability of the euro as a currency against their local currency and the US dollar. The six-monthly surveys of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank in eastern and south-eastern Europe show that confidence in the euro in the eastern EU countries fell steadily between 2007 and 2011.