Last month, Euromoney hosted a one day conference in New York on the subject of the euro, allowing some rather defensive Europeans and sceptical Americans to exchange their pungent views on the first months of Europe's new currency. Jürgen Stark, deputy governor of the Deutsche Bundesbank, kicked off by conceding that, since the start of the year, initial high expectations for the currency had given way to a measure of disillusionment, while arguing that the dollar's strength may partly be the product of its status as a safe haven during the Kosovo crisis. He also pleaded that, "four months is too short a time for a conclusive evaluation".
Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer, Austrian secretary of state for finance, sought some perspective on recent euro weakness by pointing out that the theoretical value of the currency had spiked late last year in the run-up to its launch, and it has now returned to a level only slightly below its 1998 average against the dollar. This, along with attempts to portray euro weakness as in reality dollar strength, is part of an increasingly familiar official European line. And Ruttenstorfer recalled the enormous scepticism from outside Europe in recent years that it would ever achieve the required convergence to create the single currency at all.