If you want to understand why the euro is in such trouble forget, for a moment, debt and sovereign bonds – and take a look at the bank notes. The images on euro notes are of imaginary buildings. While national currencies typically feature real people and places – George Washington on the dollar bill, the Bolshoi theatre on the Russian rouble – European identity is too fragile for that. Selecting a place or a hero associated with one country would have been too controversial. So the European authorities chose vague images that represented everywhere and nowhere.
如果你想理解歐元爲何陷入了這麼大的麻煩，那麼，請暫時忘掉債務和主權債券的事情，看看各國的紙幣吧。歐元紙幣上的圖案是虛構的建築物。一國貨幣上通常會印有真實的人物和地方，比如1美元紙幣上是喬治•華盛頓(George Washington)，100俄羅斯盧布上印的是莫斯科大劇院(Bolshoi theatre)，但還沒有哪一個真實的人物或地方，能夠喚起歐盟的身份認同感。如果選擇某個國家的一個地方或一位民族英雄，可能引起太大爭議。因此，歐盟當局選擇了一些空泛的圖案，可以代表所有地方，也可能什麼也代表不了。