SanVito, for the sake of completeness, I’ll add that since the UK is not part of the Eurozone, UK experiences may not be directly relevant to Optimal Currency Area theory. Of course, any insight you have to the Eurozone generally is welcome.
But wouldn’t you agree that there’s a huge difference between moving within your own country, where you at least ‘get’ the culture and the language, than moving to a wholly different country with a wholly different language and culture? You need some pretty intense reason to make that move (significant income uplift, dream job, strong desire to live on the Mediterranean, whatever).
Fair enough, I was commenting more from the ‘EU open borders’ standpoint.
Yes, I would agree. The reason I can move from one state to another is that I know there is a base-level of protections that are guaranteed me by the Federal government here. Since the EU is a fairly new institution, I could see people being hesitant about the base-level of protections that are afforded them. If you throw in a different language and culture on top of that, then I could see how a move would be a non-trivial decision. Well, okay, here’s a problem identified. You guys should figure out a way to make people feel more comfortable about moving.
This definitely does happen. For whatever reason, a significant number of call centres are (or at least were) located in the Dublin area. They advertise for staff fluent in various European languages and these centred often attract individuals from those countries to work here. The majority of my friends here from Western Europe have at one time or another worked in a call centre or their native language tech support while living here.
Nitpick, but there’s an entire section of his Wikipedia page devoted to his philanthropic activities:
Call centres (here at any rate) are increasing sited in India rather than Europe. Much lower operating costs and relatively well-paid by Indian standards. But English language is not enough, they need training in cultural references, slang, understanding regional accents and dialect words too.
Mr Soros also nicked the Pedant’s stash a few weeks at Davos ago by casually mentioning that gold was “the ultimate bubble.” When it turned out his hedge fund had doubled its gold position in 2009, gold (and I) recovered from the dip.
I read with interest the comments from Mr Soros in the Financial Times this week when they came out, but I wouldn’t short the Euro based on that. For one thing, I think Angela Merkel will probably hold her nose and bail out Greece, perhaps while trying to come up with agreements with other EU profligate spenders to tighten up. It will be unpopular in Germany, but on the other hand a good bit of Germany’s surplus comes from selling their stuff to the proligate spenders…so
Back to Mr Soros: Who knows? He may well be talking down the Euro so he can bet on it long. He knows how to make money a lot better than I do.