A Europe Made of Money is a new history of the making of the European Monetary System (EMS), based on extensive archive research. Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol highlights two long-term processes in the monetary and economic negotiations in the decade leading up to the founding of the EMS in 1979. The first is a transnational learning process involving a powerful, networked European monetary elite that shaped a habit of cooperation among technocrats. The second stresses the importance of the European Council, which held regular meetings between heads of government beginning in 1974, giving EEC legitimacy to monetary initiatives that had previously involved semisecret and bilateral negotiations. The interaction of these two features changed the EMS from a fairly trivial piece of administrative business to a tremendously important political agreement. The inception of the EMS was greeted as one of the landmark achievements of regional cooperation, a major leap forward in the creation of a unified Europe. Yet Mourlon-Druol's account stresses that the EMS is much more than a success story of financial cooperation. The technical suggestions made by its architects reveal how state elites conceptualized the larger project of integration. And their monetary policy became a marker for the conception of European identity. The unveiling of the EMS, Mourlon-Druol concludes, represented the convergence of material interests and symbolic, identity-based concerns.

'The Brussels Commission has just suspended its senior economist, Bernard Connolly, for writing a book savaging the prospects for a common currency. There are many who now believe he should be lauded as a prophet.' Observer, Editorial, 1 October 1995'Mr. Connolly's longstanding proposition that the foisting of a common currency upon so many disparate nations would end in ruin is getting a much wider hearing...' New York Times, 17 November 2011When first published in 1995, The Rotten Heart of Europe caused outrage and delight - here was a Brussels insider, a senior EU economist, daring to talk openly about the likely pitfalls of European monetary union. Bernard Connolly lost his job at the Commission, but his book was greeted as a profound and persuasive expose of the would-be 'monetary masters of the world.' His brave act of defiance became headline news - and his book a major international bestseller. In a substantial new introduction, Connolly returns to his prophetic account of the double-talk surrounding the efforts of politicians, bankers and bureaucrats to force Europe into a crippling monetary straitjacket. Hidden agendas are laid bare, skulduggery exposed and economic fallacies are skewered, producing a horrifying conclusion. No one who wants to understand the workings of the EU, past, present and future can afford to miss this enthralling and deeply disturbing book.

Most European countries are rather small, yet we know little about their monetary history. This book analyses for the first time the experience of seven small states (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland) during the last hundred years, starting with the restoration of the gold standard after World War I and ending with Sweden's rejection of the Euro in 2003. The comparative analysis shows that for the most part of the twentieth century the options of policy makers were seriously constrained by a distinct fear of floating exchange rates. Only with the crisis of the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1992-93 did the idea that a flexible exchange rate regime was suited for a small open economy gain currency. The book also analyses the differences among small states and concludes that economic structures or foreign policy orientations were far more important for the timing of regime changes than domestic institutions and policies.

Series title also at head of t.p.

Traces the history of European monetary negotiations from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Half fable, half manifesto, this brilliant new take on the ancient concept of cash lays bare its unparalleled capacity to empower and enthrall us. Frederick Kaufman tackles the complex history of money, beginning with the earliest myths and wrapping up with Wall Street’s byzantine present-day doings. Along the way, he exposes a set of allegorical plots, stock characters, and stereotypical metaphors that have long been linked with money and commercial culture, from Melanesian trading rituals to the dogma of Medieval churchmen faced with global commerce, the rationales of Mercantilism and colonial expansion, and the U.S. dollar’s 1971 unpinning from gold. The Money Plot offers a tool to see through the haze of modern banking and finance, demonstrating that the standard reasons given for economic inequality—the Neoliberal gospel of market forces—are, like dollars, euros, and yuan, contingent upon structures people have designed. It shines a light on the one percent’s efforts to contain a money culture that benefits them within boundaries they themselves are increasingly setting. And Kaufman warns that if we cannot recognize what is going on, we run the risk of becoming pawns and shells ourselves, of becoming characters in someone else’s plot, of becoming other people’s money.