EU Ministers Tackle Spelling of Euro . It’s “E-U-R-O” but some renegade nations are adopting the spelling to their own local language. This is causing a major ruffling of feathers among EU bureaucrats.
- “We were all surprised to find that this problem existed, but we solved it,” Zalm said. “You see how decisive finance ministers can sometimes be.”
Asked about the plural, Zalm admitted he wasn’t sure whether euro or euros was considered proper.
At a news conference later, Trichet said there was “no legal definition” relating to plurals. The EU’s executive Commission originally suggested euros in French and Spanish, but euro in English, although it notes that spelling departs from usual English practice and is often ignored in common usage.
Trichet also denied the spelling rule would impinge on Europe’s cultural diversity.
“I certainly would not call for any unification of poetry,” he said.
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This is of course a rather silly non-issue. More troubling is the attempt by distinctly welfare statist countries like France, Germany and Sweden to force Eastern European countries to raise taxes on corporations. Though that will probably not be adopted in the near future as not only the Eastern Europeans themselves but also the UK and Ireland opposse any “minimum tax” rules.
Regarding the spelling issue, I suggest creating an ad hoc Working Group with representatives of all 25 member states to study the issue and come up with a recommendation. And that the “ad hoc” Group be financed by an “ad hoc” tax, of course.
Regarding the minimum tax issue raised by Stefan, even more troubling is the fact that its strongest advocates are the French supposedly “right wing” government. Imagine what the socialists will try to do when they come to power!
I think the opponents of the minimum tax may win a battle (perhaps with a little help from the former soviet sattelite countries who have experienced socialism and know too well where this might be heading), but in the long run, I am afraid “harmonization” (at the level of French and Swedish taxation) will prevail.
Bunch of bureaucratic morons, thinking they can legislate grammar the same way they can overrule the laws of economics (har har).
When the EU bigwigs introduced the euro symbol (€), they also mandated that it was a logo and not a typographical symbol, and therefore had to look *identical* to the official sketch no matter where it was typeset or displayed.
Of course the design and editorial world has completely ignored this useless mandate, adapting the look of the symbol to suit the typefaces it’s used with, just as is done with all other currency symbols.
What is ironic is that the original poster of this blog used the phrase “fiat money.” If you study the roots of the meaning of the word money, you will find that money meant gold or silver coin, and had nothing to do with the paper that we call “money” today.
In fact, older Federal Reserve Notes had the following phrase on them:
“This note…is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, or at any Federal Reserve Bank.”
This clearly indicates that the note itself was not money, but could be redeemed for it. Otherwise, the statement would be non-sensical. In this sense us Americans have fallen pray to the verbicide of the fiat currency regime as much as the Europeans.
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