Crypto isn't universal. Globally, it's barely accepted anywhere and it's too expensive to make small purchases. Not to mention the pyramid scheme of it all where it's treated as an investment rather than a currency.

And there isn't a global currency because countries want to have control over their own money and monetary policy. Would you want a financial crisis on the other side of the planet to tank your currency through no fault of your own?

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Individual countries having their own currency provides powerful advantages, since the country can float its own currency against other currencies and thus provide a buffer during times of economic turmoil. Also, countries that issue their own currency can not go bankrupt, since they are in control of the amount of currency in circulation and can originate more if needed.

The Euro is a good counter-example for why international currencies are dangerous. Countries that have adopted the euro have seen tremendous economic and political power move outside their own country as a result.

Greece, famously, was brought to its knees economically by German bankers who were determined to throw the existing Greek government out of office and force the country to borrow money to meet targets imposed from outside, impoverishing the local population and forcing a mass exodus of working age people.

There are global currencies. USD is basically a global currency. SDRs are a global currency that logistics companies all use. Crypto will never be a global currency. It's a "gold standard" currency and too volatile. There are tokenised forms that could act as fiat, but government's need to control the printing of currency. Randos making token fiat will not manage them as well as governments. I know, I know, all government's bad, but, in reality, most are better than people like Bankman-Fried.

>The Euro is a good counter-example for why international currencies are dangerous. Countries that have adopted the euro have seen tremendous economic and political power move outside their own country as a result.

I'm going to have to disagree here. The reason Greece and Italy are dependent on Germany and France isn't the currency unit, it's that they're shit at running thier economies and then they just take bailouts and keep blaming the people that bail them out. They could get their shit together and be economic leaders, they choose not to. Blame game is just easier.

As monetary policy is a great part of sovereignity, states tend not to let a supranational organization make those deciscions for them. There is of course the concept of a universal currency (see Keynes' Bancor) while maintaining the national currencies. As this role is - for historical reasons (see Bretton Woods) - currently occupied by the US$ and there is no rival challenging the concept itself, a global currency is far away.

To offer a third perspective, the Mediterranean countries have an intrinsically different approach to life than their northern neighbours. Trying to harness Germany and Greece together under a single monetary unit was always a bonkers idea - if you harness a racehorse and a plowhorse together, neither will be able to achieve its goal.

The mistake of the German financiers was to put the ideal of a united Europe over practical considerations.

We don't have universal currencies because it would be very bad for many/most countries. One means that markets adjust for productivity, labor cost etc is through the exchange rate differences in different currencies.

If all countries shared the same currency, this "average" price will make labor in highly productive countries very cheap and labor in low/developing economies too expensive. This means super high unemployment and low investment into developing economies. The rich countries get richer and the poor countries get poorer.

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This is really not true, for Greece at least. Greece's economic policy and performance pre-financial crisis certainly wasn't great, but it wasn't shocking. Post financial crisis, it had a disastrous economic policy imposed on it, known as "extend-and-pretend" - keep giving temporary relief for debt, insisting on public spending cuts (which tanked the economy further) and pretending that things were going to work. This was so disastrous (both for Greece and the eurozone generally) that the IMF, of all institutions, ended up coming out in opposition to it.

Exactly why these policies were imposed is a bit more complex than "German bankers" and links to institutional design and politics in the EU. Though "German bankers", and the reluctance of Germany to admit to how exposed its banks were to the financial crisis, is part of it.

Greece runs a bad economy. Full stop. They have too many state owned enterprises. Too much red tape. Too many social programs. And guess what? They had to ask for money because they ran the economy into the ground. If you ask for money, the lender has to believe they can get it back, but the EU didn't even believe Greece could ever really pay it back. They have given tons of free money and relief over the years and the Greek government knows they'll keep getting free money. In return, ya, they have less clout and the major economies look down on them, and make demands. Demands they couldn't make if Greece fixed it's economy and became an asset rather than a liability. Both Italy and Greece are run by the older voting block that demands free money and services for old people that they can't cut off / are unwilling to cut off. So they keep voting for anyone who says they can keep their defunct economies doling out money when the only way to do that is to keep borrowing. So the lenders then say well I'll give you money if you do XYZ to fix your economy so we think we can at least get something back. But then they don't do it and the politicians point at Germany and Euros for all their political problems as a scapegoat. If Greece had it's own currecny it and left the EU it would have been bankrupt already decades ago. When they joined in 2001, the USD to GRD was 1 to 320. As soon as they joined the EU there was a boom in confidence (because they were now backed by Germany and France and the UK), and then they started spending like crazy and haven't stopped. They need to make major changes to their economy, but it's not politically expedient. So they take money and blame the EU. You don't want strings attached? Stop borrowing money and fix the economy.

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If countries don't have their own currencies, then they lose tools that help them out of recessions or slow inflation... ability to increase/decrease money supply, using weak currency to export way out of recession.

If you look at what happened to Europe after the 2008 great recession, you'll see how a strong Euro hurt weaker European countries' recovery (Greece, Spain).

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US corporations keep taking gigantic bailouts, but it's not a problem for the overall US economy because the US can just print more money to cover the bailout.

If US corporate bailouts had to be paid in rubles (for some reason), that would give Russia a tremendous amount of leverage over the US economy, even though they have nothing to do with the US. And there would be nothing the US corporations could do about it.

That's basically what happened to Greece, and will happen to any nation whose currency is the euro.

Nope. Ps., why doesn't Alabma leave the US and make it's own currency so that it can't be "controlled" by California or New York? Truth is, it helps to be in a larger market as well as having some downsides. The Euro isn't what makes Italy have crippling red tape that makes any IT company unworkable. California isn't what made Alabama the poorest state. It's the choices they make.