| I have watched the debate over Scotland’s independence with a certain déjà-vu. In 1995, I along with everyone else in Canada watched nervously as Quebecers voted on whether to separate. Like Scotland’s separatists today, Quebec’s then said they would continue to use the old country’s currency. Jacques Parizeau, the separatist leader, traveled in a bus decorated with the Canadian dollar and insisted that Canadian objections could not stop Quebec from using it.
Yet for a new country to keep another's currency is, on its face, an odd decision. It robs a country of many tools of autonomous economic policy: monetary policy, of course, but to a great extent fiscal policy as well since monetary policy is no longer available to cushion expansionary or contractionary fiscal shocks. ..........................................Full Article: Source
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