---
title: "Euro, ECU2 and Hamilton | Sami Miettinen | Neuvottelija 347"
titleOriginal: "Euro ECU2 Hamilton | Sami Miettinen | #neuvottelija 347"
episodeNumber: "347"
guest: "Sami Miettinen"
datePublished: 2025-08-20
duration: "17:07"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ"
captionsVtt: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep347-euro-ecu2-hamilton-sami-miettinen/captions.en.vtt
captionsSrt: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep347-euro-ecu2-hamilton-sami-miettinen/captions.en.srt
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["finnish_economy_policy","ownership_capital_tax","geopolitics"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata, the neuvottelija.fi episode record and the published Neuvottelija AI edition summary. Chapter marks are the ones published with the video. No transcript imported."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/701-euro-ecu2-hamilton-sami-miettinen-neuvottelija-347"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep347-euro-ecu2-hamilton-sami-miettinen/
---
# Euro, ECU2 and Hamilton | Sami Miettinen | Neuvottelija 347

## Chapters

- [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=0s) Euro, ECU2 and Alexander Hamilton
- [00:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=25s) Monetary systems, the euro and the London Hamilton musical
- [00:49](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=49s) The Hamilton musical and the founders' judgement
- [01:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=71s) Hamilton as a federalist: a strong dollar and the foundations of the Fed
- [01:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=98s) Hamilton's role in constitutional change and as treasury secretary
- [02:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=167s) Finland in the euro against Sweden's and Poland's floating currencies
- [03:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=203s) The Covid support package and Finland's negative net position
- [04:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=248s) Alternatives for Finland's euro strategy, and the ECU-2 model
- [05:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=307s) ECU-2 against the original ECU; national currencies in parallel
- [06:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=367s) Lex monetae and whether an EU member may have its own currency
- [06:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=395s) Net wealth compared: Finland, Sweden, the US and Switzerland
- [07:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=468s) Floating currencies as counter-cyclical, the euro as pro-cyclical
- [09:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=558s) The IMF's SDR and where ECU-2 resembles it
- [10:29](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=629s) Hamilton's federal model: assuming state debts, and a strong dollar
- [11:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=677s) EU debt and the limits of Finland's tax base
- [11:54](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=714s) Trump's tariffs, and Hamilton's tariffs as a federal tax base
- [13:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=780s) The EU's carbon and digital taxes against a small budget
- [13:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=833s) The scale of the EU budget next to the United States
- [14:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=895s) Hamilton's solutions against the EU, and the zero-sum framing
- [15:27](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=927s) Finnish borrowing and the fiscal policy law being reformed
- [16:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=960s) Nordic debt levels compared, and where Finland is heading
- [16:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ&t=997s) 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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFPcuPqDJQ).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at
[www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/701-euro-ecu2-hamilton-sami-miettinen-neuvottelija-347).

The proposal was argued at length against Juhana Vartiainen in
[Puheenaihe 131](/media/puheenaihe-131-ecu-2-basket/), and the underlying monetary
argument runs through [Puheenaihe 44](/media/puheenaihe-44-international-monetary-system/).

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — Euro, ECU2 and Hamilton | Sami Miettinen | Neuvottelija 347, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep347-euro-ecu2-hamilton-sami-miettinen/, 2025-08-20. For quotes include episode 347 and timestamp.