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<oembed><version>1.0</version><provider_name>naked capitalism</provider_name><provider_url>https://www.nakedcapitalism.com</provider_url><author_name>Nathan Tankus</author_name><author_url>https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/author/nathan-tankus</author_url><title>The Euro as Idealist Project or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Pragmatic Elites | naked capitalism</title><type>rich</type><width>600</width><height>338</height><html>&lt;blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="SzOAqR0EEL"&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/the-euro-as-idealist-project-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-pragmatic-elites.html"&gt;The Euro as Idealist Project or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Pragmatic Elites&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;iframe sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" src="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/the-euro-as-idealist-project-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-pragmatic-elites.html/embed#?secret=SzOAqR0EEL" width="600" height="338" title="&#x201C;The Euro as Idealist Project or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Pragmatic Elites&#x201D; &#x2014; naked capitalism" data-secret="SzOAqR0EEL" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" class="wp-embedded-content"&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;&lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;
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</html><description>By Nathan Tankus,s a member of Occupy Wall Street Alternative Banking working group. He is also deeply involved in the heterodox economics community and plans to have a PhD in economics before the decade is done. Cross posted with View From the Metropole.   In accounts of American economic history, the early days of banking are typically described as chaotic, contradictory and many decisions are depicted as awful, stupid mistakes. That period certainly included all these things, but looking at Europe now, one can't help but feel that many back then (especially the elites) understood money better and were much better pragmatists.</description></oembed>

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