| A short while ago we were wondering whether the Chinese leaders would soon be acquiring a taste for Guinness. They are not there yet – at least publicly – although they are putting port wine on their “drink tasting” tour of Europe, as they decide how best to use their economic power to keep the EUR in one piece. For years the Chinese have been propping up, or more precisely, managing, the decline of the USD. They now appear to have decided that the EUR also needs their care and attention. The motivation of the Chinese leadership is obvious: so long as the country’s economic expansion is built on exports, it has every interest in maintaining the purchasing power of its largest markets. |
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| Since the explosion in the euro zone debt crisis, our faith that European leaders will do whatever it takes to hold the euro together has been based on a mixture of political will not to countenance failure of the single-currency experiment, and a cold economic calculation that the cost of break up would be much greater than the cost of staying together. |