CPI Financial

Let’s be ‘franc’, it is looking more and more like the euro’s cards have been firmly ‘mark’-ed. The last truly successful pan-European currency was that of the Romans, which lasted around six centuries, the aureus, denarius and sestertius. I suppose an honourable mention should also go to the silver thaler, first produced in Bohemia in the 16th century and which sculled around for almost four hundred years, with Austrian Maria Theresa thalers still being used as a common unit of exchange among the countries that now form the GCC well into the 20th century. The German ‘thaler’ is, of course, the linguistic origin of ‘dollar’. Will the Euro make it to 400 or even 600? Right now the odds are not looking too good.