The United States as usual has a sizable deficit in the current account of its balance of payments, trade account and other current accounts, current account items.

So if the euro, if Euroland is to become a reserve center, if the euro is to become a reserve currency, Euroland will have to have a deficit in its overall balance of payments.

What gives life meaning is a form of rebellion, rebellion against reason, an insistence on believing passionately what we cannot believe rationally. The meaning of life is to be found in passion—romantic passion, religious passion,...

There has been talk in Europe about American hegemony being somehow based upon the use of the dollar in the world. I just don’t see that connection at all.

The reserve currency role seems to add prestige to an area and some people in Europe have talked about the desirability of the euro becoming an international reserve currency.

Nietzsche says very clearly all the way through his career that if you want to define human nature the first thing you must say is that human beings insist on value–we see the world through...

There is a European Central Bank, of course, established and it has the structure similar to the Federal Reserve system, not precisely the same but similar.

There’s a stability and growth pact which was agreed for the eleven countries which tries to limit the size of budget deficits among the eleven countries.

So you can be pretty sure that central banks around the world will not start dumping dollars on the market in order to buy euros.

To the extent that the United States has, I don’t like the word hegemony, the United States has influence around the world, I don’t think that’s based on to any significant degree on the fact...

Today we have so much more flow of private capital that most international imbalances are financed that way, by private capital movements.

Some countries that are close to Europe that already hold Deutschemarks, clearly would automatically hold euros, those are countries in Eastern Europe mainly, a few countries in Africa.

On private transactions, I’ll just go very quickly now, a major difference between the United States and Euroland is that in Europe banks are much more important in financial transactions than in the United States.

The dollar is currently the principal reserve currency in the world.

Another question has been raised rather widely in Europe, in Japan as well as in the United States is what, to what extent will the euro become a reserve currency.

The dollar is the main private currency for investment purposes, for transactions purposes, as a vehicle currency as it’s called.

Back in those days, in the fifties and sixties, countries had balance of payment’s deficits or surpluses, those were reflected much more than today in movements of reserves among countries.

The dollar performs internationally all three functions of money, as a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a standard of value.

Chances are the movements of the euro as against the dollar will be relatively moderate.

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The dollar went up some eighty percent in real terms as I recall now or something like that – from ’80 to ’85.

If a currency is to become a growing, an increasing reserve currency, there has to be not only a demand for it there has to be a supply of it.

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The major material advantage, financial advantage from having a reserve currency is that between 200 and 300 billion dollar bills, that may be twenty, fifty, hundred dollar bills as well as ones, exist in the...

In the United States, securities markets are much more developed than they are in Europe.

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The prices of all imports would rise if the dollar depreciates.

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