The so-called architect of the euro monetary system – died recently in Rome. I guess architects like to leave behind objects of style and beauty that also function well. There is a huge debate among architects about form and function and whether ornamentation is functional. Form follows function has been the catch cry of modernists in architecture and I am most familiar with the debate when it is applied to software development (and its architectural characteristics). Anyway, the euro architect has left behind a monetary system that neither has form or function. It is an ugly creation that is increasingly revealing its dysfunction. But try telling that to the EU leadership who have just finished another summit in Brussels, where I suppose the cuisine and setting was sumptuous and the wine was top class. And like all previous summits all that was forthcoming was further political rhetoric about the irreversibility of the euro and the political commitment to defend it. In real terms this translates into imposing a state of more or less permanent unemployment and austerity on millions of Europeans. Eventually the gap between the leader’s rhetoric and the underlying reality will become so wide the system will crumble. But in the meantime the EMU is a bankruptcy machine.