Chief Executive of Danish Saxo Bank: "The euro is doomed"

Things have been fairly quiet in Euroland lately, mainly due to the upcoming German elections. (Chancellor Merkel and her Social democratic opponent do not want the euro crisis to disturb the election campaign). But the crisis has of course not disappeared. That's why it is good that Lars Christensen, chief executive of Saxo Bank, reminds us about the reality:

The eurozone is doomed and its dysfunctional model has no chance of recovery with the euro in its current form, creating problems for Russia and other world economies, Lars Christensen, chief executive of European investment bank Saxo Bank, said at a Moscow press conference on Tuesday.
Underperforming eurozone countries create a massive drain on the world economy, he said. “This is a problem not just for Russia but for everybody else,” Christensen added. Saxo bank has been operating in Russia since 2011. --

 

“The euro is doomed. It took decades to get it in place and unfortunately it will have a very long time to get rid of it again,” he said.
While an immediate dissolution of the common European currency has a potential to be catastrophic for some economies and political leaders who invested their careers in it, the eurozone project had “fundamental construction” problems from the very start, Christensen added.
“These 17 countries [which are part of the eurozone] have to act as if they were a one nation state, [where] you can have some solidarity with areas that are underperforming and accept substantial transfer payments [to support them]. [But] you can’t expect 17 countries to have that kind of solidarity toward each other,” he added.
“[Greece] hasn’t done anything different from what they did before they joined the eurozone. Greece is not the problem for euro. Euro is the problem for Greece.”

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