Monetary non-union

When I heard about the criticisms--including a smirk--that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy aimed at Silvio Berlusconi regarding Italian economic reforms, it made me think that even the widest-eyed idealist must admit that any sort of monetary union possibility in Latin America is dead. It was already a long shot given age old nationalist concerns.

Remember Hugo Chávez's call for a common currency called the Sucre? Just imagine a time when one president starts criticizing another for failure to enact economic reforms. We'll get a redux of King Juan Carlos' "Por qué no te callas?" (which now has its own Wikipedia page).