Europe

In Europe, the debut of the euro is widely hailed as the most important event affecting the international monetary landscape since the breakup of the Bretton Woods System in 1971 to 1973, or since the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944, or maybe even since the founding of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. It has become a contest for European officials and commentators to see who can push the analogy back furthest in time. Eminences elsewhere in the world have similarly greeted the euro with high hopes and great expectations. Even Fidel Castro has praised Europe for creating a currency which finally confronts the dollar with a "prospective adversary" and promises to bring to a close the long postwar period of U.S. monetary hegemony.

Only in the United States has the euro been greeted with a yawn. It is not hard to see why. So far, its advent has not weakened the international financial position of the dollar; if anything