by Jason Moore
I know quite alot of people who keep most of their money in pounds because they fear that the euro will disappear. Now, they have taken this decision recently, they have never had any faith in the single currency and were more prepared to bank on the pound sterling being a safer option than the euro. I mentioned this state of affairs to my bank manager the other day and the campaign against the euro which is raged by some British newspapers. She replied that the pound was not fairing much better than the euro at the moment and underlined the fact that two British banks had been bailed out by the tax-payer. In some ways she is right; the British economy does have its problems and so do British banks. But so does the euro. I mentioned whether the euro would survive to a German colleague recently and he said that it certainly would although he did admit that some of his counterparts were getting rather angry at having to bail out states in southern Europe. At the moment we are getting some very mixed messages: what is clear is that there is little to choose between the British economy and those on mainland Europe. They are both in a real mess. Is the pound safer than the euro? I don´t really know but despite the euro´s ills, sterling is still worth about 15 percent less against the single currency than it was say four years ago. The safest thing to do is to buy gold and hope that the present recession will soon end and the euro and pound will live happily ever after.