The debate continues as experts give their counterarguments:
Bernard Connolly, executive director of AIG international.
Avinash Persaud, global head of research for State Street bank.
Acres of newsprint have been devoted to the weakness of the euro against the dollar since its launch, but writers have struggled to find any crisis which can be blamed unambiguously for this. Indeed, it is unlikely that there will be agreement on what, if anything, should be done about the euro's brush with dollar parity.
The script for announcing the birth of the euro did not envision this scenario - partly because economic forecasts for 1999 had just been cut in the wake of the Russian crisis: From 3% GDP growth in Euroland to 2% and from 2.5% for the US to less than 2%, at the gloomiest. In the event, the recovery in the US has probably passed its peak now - having recorded more than 4% growth - and Euroland finally seems to be accelerating, up to 2.5% annualized in the second half. Moreover, the sharp divergence in economic expectations was reinforced, for the markets, by political disarray in Europe - the Commission was forced to resign and German Finance Minister Lafontaine started espousing old-fashioned socialist policies (before he too resigned).