Episode 347 · 2025-08-20 · 17:07 · Original in Finnish
Euro, ECU2 and Hamilton | Sami Miettinen | Neuvottelija 347
Originally published as “Euro ECU2 Hamilton | Sami Miettinen | #neuvottelija 347”
A solo episode, recorded at the Sisäpiiri audience's request that Sami work through a theory without a guest to argue with. He reflects on monetary systems, the euro and the EU by way of the Hamilton musical in London: the ECU-2 basket proposal from Libera's 2014 book, why floating currencies are counter-cyclical and the euro pro-cyclical, what Alexander Hamilton actually did with state debts and tariffs, and why the EU has no comparable fiscal base to work with.
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Key moments
- 00:00 — Euro, ECU2 and Alexander Hamilton
- 00:25 — Monetary systems, the euro and the London Hamilton musical
- 00:49 — The Hamilton musical and the founders' judgement
- 01:11 — Hamilton as a federalist: a strong dollar and the foundations of the Fed
- 01:38 — Hamilton's role in constitutional change and as treasury secretary
- 02:47 — Finland in the euro against Sweden's and Poland's floating currencies
- 03:23 — The Covid support package and Finland's negative net position
- 04:08 — Alternatives for Finland's euro strategy, and the ECU-2 model
- 05:07 — ECU-2 against the original ECU; national currencies in parallel
- 06:07 — Lex monetae and whether an EU member may have its own currency
- 06:35 — Net wealth compared: Finland, Sweden, the US and Switzerland
- 07:48 — Floating currencies as counter-cyclical, the euro as pro-cyclical
- 09:18 — The IMF's SDR and where ECU-2 resembles it
- 10:29 — Hamilton's federal model: assuming state debts, and a strong dollar
- 11:17 — EU debt and the limits of Finland's tax base
- 11:54 — Trump's tariffs, and Hamilton's tariffs as a federal tax base
- 13:00 — The EU's carbon and digital taxes against a small budget
- 13:53 — The scale of the EU budget next to the United States
- 14:55 — Hamilton's solutions against the EU, and the zero-sum framing
- 15:27 — Finnish borrowing and the fiscal policy law being reformed
- 16:00 — Nordic debt levels compared, and where Finland is heading
- 16:37 — What to take up next
Summary
A solo episode, recorded at the Sisäpiiri audience’s request that Sami work through a theory on his own for once, without a guest to argue with. He takes monetary systems — the area he knows best — and reflects on the euro and the EU by way of having just seen the Hamilton musical in London.
The core of it is the ECU-2 proposal from Libera’s 2014 book Euron tulevaisuus, Suomen vaihtoehdot. Twelve countries entered the euro by first tying their national currencies to the European Currency Unit basket and then converting at a fixed rate; ECU-2 runs that backwards, reintroducing national currencies as parallel money whose weighted sum defines the euro. The case for it is that a floating currency is counter-cyclical — it weakens in bad times, lightening the real debt burden, trimming the real value of wages and benefits, and making exports and domestic production competitive — where the euro is pro-cyclical. Sweden and Poland took the position Sami regards as the winning one: in the EU, out of the euro.
The Hamilton half is about what a federation needs to actually be one. Hamilton assumed the states’ debts once, converted them into federal debt payable in full, and built both a strong dollar and the American banking system on it — and he funded the federal government with tariffs. Sami’s observation is that the EU has been told to have its Hamilton moment without either of the two things that made Hamilton’s work: a federal tax base and a budget of meaningful size. The EU’s annual budget is about the size of Finland’s GDP. He is openly surprised that the EU did not put a small baseline tariff on the table in the Trump negotiations, since the revenue could have been negotiated into the union’s own resources.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Euro ECU2 Hamilton | Sami Miettinen | #neuvottelija 347. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.
The proposal was argued at length against Juhana Vartiainen in Puheenaihe 131, and the underlying monetary argument runs through Puheenaihe 44.
People and topics
Topics: Finnish Economy & Policy Ownership, Capital & Tax Geopolitics