Draghi says euro is here to stay

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BRUSSELS, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- The head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, said Monday the euro is here to stay and it will survive Europe's debt crisis.

"I have no doubts whatsoever about the strength of the euro, about its permanence, about its irreversibility. But you have a lot of people, especially outside the euro area, who spend a lot of time in what I call morbid speculation," Draghi told the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.

He said countries that abandoned the euro would be in "a much weaker position," the British Broadcasting Corp. reported Monday.

Draghi said the ECB would stick to its mission of controlling inflation. However, "monetary financing of states" was prohibited by the European Union treaty, he said.