Where does it all end? What will be the outcome of the financial storm battering Europe and its single currency? Can the euro be saved? And if so, what will be the long-term consequences?
The financial historian Niall Ferguson, visiting London from his self-imposed exile in America to promote the paperback version of his most recent book, is typically confident that he has the answers to these difficult questions — and they are not what you might expect from this tireless proponent of free markets.
As he begins his energetic deconstruction of the euro’s prospects, he wants to remind us that he was deeply and publicly sceptical of its creation in the first place. “I was a staunch opponent of the single currency in the