Brother can you
spare a euro?

Europe has erupted in euro
euphoria. After years of euro-planning, the people across the
pond have finally got their hands on that new unified currency
you’ve been hearing about – the euro.

Spain, France, Germany and
the gang are now awash in an unfamiliar rainbow of pretty pastel
bank notes and bright jingly doubloons.

All the fashionable European
countries are doing it. Italy, Greece, Austria. They’re loving
the euro in Luxembourg. They’re mad for it in Madagascar. No
wait, that’s Africa (conversion table: 1.32 euros = 1 afro).

The euro is worth a little
less than a buck (about 90 cents) and some say it looks like
Monopoly money. (The back side of the 50-euro note features
a portrait of the Greek philosopher Socrates wearing a top hat
and monocle.)

In fact, the Associated
Press reported that on Jan. 1 a customer at a bar in southern
France bought himself a drink using a Monopoly bill from the
game’s European edition.

So they’re still working
out a few bugs. For example, right now it costs 0.62 euros for
a can of Coke in Copenhagen, but 150 euros for a Mountain Dew
in Dusseldorf.
There have been scattered reports of people accidentally tossing
the unfamiliar eurocash into the eurotrash. And a high-profile
PR campaign cautions: "Don’t take any wooden euros."

Meanwhile, economic analyst
Frank Drachma is advising U.S. consumers to pay no attention
to the advent of the euro, which will be largely ignored here
in the land of the almighty dollar.

John Breneman
1-6-02