Whatever its current political impasse, the United States retains the advantage of having both a single currency and a single sovereign debt-issuer. There is a unified fiscal authority, to complement a unified monetary authority. (Most states are legally forbidden to borrow, and even where this constraint is evaded, are in no practical position to abandon the dollar.) Investors can therefore have confidence that, one way or another, the U.S. government will find a way to make good on its debts.
The euro experiment, by contrast, was an attempt to unite several sovereign debt-issuers under a single currency—a unified monetary authority, superimposed on a welter of competing and conflicting fiscal authorities, quite insubordinate to Brussels.
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