I had a hunch what I was about to getting into when I saw "Ludwig von Mises Institute" on the cover page of the book. After reading it, I felt vindicated. The whole book is an Austrian school-centric monologue on history of EMU and the dissection of euro crisis: First, the well accepted supranational vs. intergovernmental visions of EU are interpreted in a drastically different fashion through Austrian ideology of socialism vs. liberalism. Furthermore, the author shows strong Austrian-style contempt on fiat money and institutions that print it, including ECB, as well as modern fractional-reserve banks. The flip side of that contempt is the nostalgia for "good-old" gold standard.
Biased and misleading opinions are everywhere in this book. Cost benefit analysis of Euro becomes cost-only analysis for northern Germanic countries and benefit-only analysis for southern Latin countries. Germany did sacrifice D-Mark for French support of reunification. But depicting it as the solo reason of Germany giving up D-Mark is misleading. Misleading or not, the author clearly wins favors from his fellow eurosceptics in Germany with those conspiracy theories.
On top of all shortcomings, the book failed miserably in the examination of the euro crisis. The doctrinated explanation -- again, through Austrian school framework -- of banks failure, sovereign default risk of periphery countries doesn't provide much valuable insights on either the causes or solutions to the euro crisis.
Part of the information in the book is also outdated, especially regarding the differences between Fed and ECB. Much has changed since the great recession. Thus, it requires extra reading to understand current monetary policy implementation of Fed and ECB.
If only I could get my time and money back...
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