Ya don't say? I distinctly remember hearing lots of stories before the official euro launch of countries fudging the numbers and getting creative to fit into the official zone of acceptability. As an outsider looking in, both the EU and the eurozone always felt rushed and a move of desperation by the aging political class who saw this as their crowning accomplishment. Leaders should have used more cold, hard facts rather than emotion, but of course, most of those leaders are now gone and out of the political system.
One of those leaders, Jacques Delors is now pointing out what everyone already knew but did nothing about. The Independent:
Mr Delors, head of the commission from 1985 to 1995 and known for his clashes with Margaret Thatcher, admitted that when "Anglo-Saxons" warned that a single central bank and currency without a single state would be inherently unstable "they had a point".
"The finance ministers did not want to see anything disagreeable which they would be forced to deal with," he said.
Mr Delors insisted that all European countries had to share the blame for excessive borrowing by countries such as Italy and Greece that have brought the system to the brink of disaster.
