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If you want to understand why the euro is in such trouble forget, for a moment, debt and sovereign bonds – and take a look at the bank notes. The images on euro notes are of imaginary buildings. While national currencies typically feature real people and places – George Washington on the dollar bill, the Bolshoi theatre on the Russian rouble – European identity is too fragile for that. Selecting a place or a hero associated with one country would have been too controversial. So the European authorities chose vague images that represented everywhere and nowhere.

Now, a decade after euro notes first emerged from cash machines across the continent, this lack of a common identity is the fatal flaw that may sink the common currency.

—Gideon Rachman in the FT (via wrightbryan3)

(via npr)