In addition, the rapid expansion of the money supply causes the currency to lose value against hard assets and foreign currencies.

FORBES: Inflation Destroys Real Wages

This has created companies with the motive to expand, a clear-enough governance structure to allow for a strategy of expansion, and the currency with which to buy another exchange.

ECONOMIST: The prospect of a transatlantic merger is long overdue

But the new currency's arrival and the approach of eastward expansion will put strategic issues back on the agenda soon enough.

ECONOMIST: Germany and the European Union