How can the single currency have a long term future when it has robbed a whole generation of young people of jobs and hope?
That is the question eurozone leaders ought to be asking themselves, instead of bone-headedly refusing to countenance the idea that the project was a tragic mistake.
The euro area unemployment figures published yesterday set out the stark numbers.
Betrayal of a generation: The most recent eurozone area unemployment figures set out stark numbersAlmost six in every ten Greeks aged under 25 are kicking their heels in the dole queue instead of forging a career and building a future. More than 55 per cent of young Spaniards are in the same position.
In Portugal and Italy, where just under 40 per cent of the under 25s are out of work, it is scarcely better. France is meant to be one of the two core nations of the eurozone, yet 26 per cent of its young people are out of work.
These figures are shocking, but they do not convey the human impact on young people and their parents, who are forced to look on impotently as their dreams of success for their children evaporate before their eyes.
More... SIMON WATKINS: Euro gasps on deathbed in Cyprus crisisYouth unemployment can be even more damaging than joblessness in later life, economists tell us. It can take a lifelong toll on career progression and earnings, as many do not manage to make up for lost early time.
Depriving the young of the chance of a job can also harm economies. Young people are mobile, so nations such as Cyprus risk a diaspora in which they lose their brightest and most enterprising – a loss that will make it even harder to rebuild prosperity.
The elite that professes itself prepared to do whatever it takes to save the euro should ponder whether it includes the sacrifice of the young on the altar of the single currency.
Audit conflictsThe independence of auditors, or lack of it, is an evergreen problem, heightened by their wholesale failure in the financial crisis to sound a warning klaxon.
Shareholders at RSA are right to raise questions about possible conflicts of interest at insurer RSA, whose audit committee, headed by a former senior figure at KPMG, has just hired that self same firm to check its books.
The board at the insurer is satisfied everything is above board, and with just four large audit firms to pick from, there was not a great deal of choice.
The Competition Commission is currently conducting a probe into the Big Four’s stranglehold over the FTSE 100 and its final report is due later this year.
Senior accountants cross over into senior jobs in industry all the time, including distinguished figures such as Sir Mike Rake, the chairman of BT.
Another boardroom luminary is former Deloitte boss John Connolly, whose censure over his role in the late 1980s Barlow Clowes board has been sufficiently shrouded in the mists of time for him to be appointed chairman of Amec and G4S.
It is easy to see how companies would want former audit chiefs on their board, as these individuals have a depth and breadth of experience that is hard to equal.
But shareholders are often too complacent about the risks of over-close links between the board and the beancounters.
They should ask difficult questions more often.
This is not just a technicality; clouds over auditor independence loomed over two of this country’s worst bank meltdowns.
At Northern Rock, the head of audit committee during a crucial period for the stricken lender was a former senior figure at its auditor, PwC.
At RBS, Fred Goodwin, an alumnus of Deloitte and a protégé of Connolly, appointed his old firm to act as auditors.
Deloitte signed off on the accounts a matter of months before the bank went under and came within a hair’s breadth of bringing Britain’s entire financial system down with it.
These are cautionary tales about an issue on which companies must be seen to be beyond even the faintest suggestion of reproach.
Top StandardDavid Nish, the Standard Life supremo, has a good case that he deserved to take home a hefty £5m pay and incentives package in 2012.
It would be churlish not to point out that the Edinburgh giant increased its profits and handed shareholders a £302m special dividend, so there is no question of payment for failure.
Still, as one the UK’s largest institutional shareholders, Standard monitors excessive pay at other FTSE 100 firms. Delivering a sermon could be tricky when it pays its own boss so generously.
Not to mention that a payslip on this scale probably creates an unusual perspective on what constitutes excess.