Bulgaria has just joined the Eurozone

More to come soon...

The only special coin I ever found was an Italian 1€ on which someone had given the little figure boobs with soldering tin. But alas, I bought a croissant with it.

"The country that ran most afoul of these rules was Greece. Unlike that of Spain, Ireland, or Italy, the Greek crisis was not just a liquidity crisis; the Greek state was truly insolvent and had been concealing the fact for some time. While it is a matter of debate how great a role the fiscal rules and their enforcers played in the pro-cyclical austerity measures implemented throughout Europe between 2010 and 2015 (the fear of a market response is another plausible explanation), there is little doubt that they were harshly imposed on Greece. The “troika” — composed of the council of eurozone finance ministers (the Eurogroups), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the European Central Bank – forced the country into three separate “bailouts.” These were additional loan programs adding to its already unsustainable debt, handed out under conditions of grueling structural reforms and budget cuts. This was policy that guaranteed an increase in the country’s debt burden while undermining its capacity to service it. Very little of the money leant (only about 5 percent) was actually directed toward stimulating the economy. The rest was repaid to private creditors, German banks prominent among them. Greece was further compelled to privatize many of its remaining state assets. It is worth underscoring that the German airport company Fraport now owns fourteen of the country’s airports. The human consequences of austerity can only be described as degrading. Unemployment in Greece peaked at just under 30 percent and over a third of the country now lives in poverty. GDP collapsed by 25 percent and is nowhere near returning to its pre-crisis level. As it stands now, Greece is expected to run permanent budget surpluses until 2060. While Merkel had officially devolved some of her responsibilities to her notoriously hard-line finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who led the council of the Eurogroup, her personal involvement with the Syriza government’s subjugation in 2015 was nonetheless intimate. As Yanis Varoufakis relates in his candid memoir of his time as Schäuble’s opposite, Merkel, frustrated by the impasse in the Eurogroup, organized a sit-down with her counterpart, Alexis Tsipras. In a series of informal meetings, Merkel carefully prised Tsipras away from his initial commitment to refuse another bailout, which would see another set of loans extended to the bankrupt state under conditions that not only immiserated millions of Greeks, but also made those loans even harder to repay. Under pressure from Merkel, however, that is precisely what Tsipras eventually did — even after Greek voters lanced the boil of political frustration and defiantly voted “Oxi” against the new bailout memorandum."

Also bring the drachma back, seriously as far as I remember, it was better.

lol