THE_LEGENDARY_HQB

Hopefully no time soon!

Good HEAD, has anyone outside of Europe seen the Euro?

From a purely aesthetic perspective, it's a soulless, ugly thing.
It looks like it was designed by Eurocrats working under E.U Directive #4,755 or some such nonsense.

No words.

Just acronyms for "European Central Bank"

No real landmarks.

And the 5 Euro has what looks like a barcode on it.

Any currency that actually give the U.S dollar serious competition in the drabness department has some serious problems.

And I won't vocalize my anger at the Dutch for getting rid of their beautiful guilders and replacing them with Euros.

Way to give the crazy fundies over here yet more ammo to label the E.U as the home of the AntiChrist...I mean, if we ever have a one world currency, you know it'll look like the Euro.

Only redeeming feature I can think of is the color scheme, but then, I've always been a sucker for holograms.

In case you didn't notice, I'm a numismatiscist

HQB

meritocrat

Nonsense.

Jat

This from a country with the easiest currency to fake. Put some color in your money.

Jat

Hardly. It's all a matter of economics. Though, wasn't it last year that some in England had compared the Euro to Nazi Germany in an effort to stop you're converting over to the Euro and it had backfired on them? Now a good number of Brits are willing to start using the Euro because of this?

Gurdur

Jat,
several High Street shops/chains have already started accepting euros in the UK --- IOW, businesses are voting with their cash registers.


As for meritocrat's reply, perhaps one day we will actually see an argument rather than unsubstantiated assertions from him.

BTW, you see the recent news article that Blair wants to take the UK into the Euro-zone and then step down for the following election, handing over the reins to Brown ?

Mark

I've never seen any canadian currency. Or American, for that matter.

Ah, so a requirement of good tender is 'words' is it? Maybe because there are 15 countries in the EU they can't do that.

Don't they all?

Oh I'm terrible sorry, we didn't consider obscure American loons in the creation of the new currency. If they act paranoid like that, it's their problem.

It seems to me that all of your criticisms have nothing to do with the performance of the currency itself.

Jolimont

I heartely dissagree. I've been to France and Spain a couple of times since the change and I love the Euro! I didn't think I would because I was raised on the Franc and I didn't like the idea of giving that up. BUT, it's a vast improvement over single currencies. I spend 3 weeks in Europe with colorful money, then I come back to the US to the drab green bill, worn out, written on, ugly... The Euro is crisp and new. I also like how they look slightly different in every country, how the size of the bill changes with the denomination. I'm not saying it couldn't be improved, or that you don't have every right to dislike it, I'm just saying I think it's beautiful and interesting as I see it.

Jayjay

I don't know how common this is, but in Finland we used to change the way our currency looks like every now and then. It's a small country, which is what I presume made it possible to actually update all the money is circulation without too much trouble. It has happened twice in the last 20 years or so (three times if you count Euro). Perhaps that's why we didn't think that making the switch was such a big deal, tradition-wise... pretty much all the schism came from learning the exchange rate between old Finnish Marks and Euro.

I can understand that Britain and France might have a bit longer standing traditions when it comes to Pounds and Francs though.

Hmm, as for the notes not having text... how about:

"One World Currency"
"Resistance Is Futile"
"Prepare To Be Assimilated"
"One Continent Under Secularism"
"Workers Of All Nations, Unite!"

or something. In all 15 (?) languages of course. And we definitely need more of those barcodes!

Mark

Or 'Nations of all workers, unite'?

Evangelion

This is also true of Australia.

We use colourful teflon notes with holograms on them. The more valuable the note, the larger the size. (Not a great deal of difference in the sizes; but significant enough to detect by touch alone.)

As for coins: a tiny little gold-coloured $2 (far too small, IMHO! What were they thinking?!), a larger gold-coloured $1, a huge, chunky silver-coloured 50c piece, then a slightly smaller 20c, a 10c (smaller again) and the little 5c (smallest.)

The ridiculous size of the $2 coin is the only complaint I'd raise about Aussie currency. The rest of it is just grand - especially our hi-tech notes.

You can put 'em through the washing machine and they'll bounce right back without a murmer.

Try doing that with the greenback!