British historian and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson says the eurozone will likely survive the economic damage from struggling members like Italy and Greece, but the European Union may not be as lucky.
In an interview with CTV's Question Period on Sunday, Ferguson said the 17-member eurozone, which shares the euro currency, is on much more stable ground than the European Union, the 27-member political organization. "It's much, much harder than it looks to dismantle a monetary union once you've created it. I think the euro will be around for some considerable time to come. I don't think that Greece would benefit from leaving, or that the Germans would gain from kicking them out," Ferguson said.
"However, the European Union is another matter. It's actually easy to leave the European Union, whereas it's hard to leave the single currency. So one possibility is that the euro may survive, but the European Union, the project of something that actually had a political as well as an economic character, that that might start to disintegrate." "What you're seeing in Europe, particularly Italy, is a warning for North America countries -- it's a warning that if you just let your deficit grow, if you allow your public debt to rise about 100 per cent of gross domestic product, at some point there will be a reckoning," Ferguson said.
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