Was it envisioned for the euro to eventually become such a strong currency that it could compete with the dollar on a global lev

Was it envisioned for the euro to eventually become such a strong currency that it could compete with the dollar on a global level? Or was that a dream then and is it still a dream now? I think it was an attainable dream, and it is becoming actually, in some ways, less attainable right now. You may ask, Why?
    Well, the dream to give credit where credit is due was not only advocated by some European officials but by some American economists, including our Institute’s director, Fred Bergsten, who was way out in the front with that. Richard Portes, who teaches at London Business School, also was way out in front with that. And they were very much against the tide of people like Martin Feldstein and others in London and the United States who were very skeptical toward the euro.
    At face value, the euro area is the same size in GDP as the United States, roughly speaking. The euro area does have very large and deep financial markets, although the more you look in detail, there are still some things there that differentiate it from the United States. And the euro area has delivered price stability. They have a very low rate of inflation pretty consistently. So you put those three things together, on paper it looks like the euro should be at least a very clear second to the dollar in investors’ portfolios, in government reserve holdings, in how much you invoice trade like oil or planes or things like that.
    But what our research finds in this book—in particular in good chapters by Kristin Forbes and Linda Goldberg—is the fact that if you look under the hood a bit, there is a huge shortfall between what you would expect just based on size and how much the euro is used. So there’s an awful lot of trade that’s still invoiced in dollars, not in euros, even between countries that are not dollar countries. There are huge amounts of financial flows that come to the United States, and the depth of European assets and financial flows is not commensurate with the size.