ABSTRACT
January 1999 marked a truly historic event, when the European Union introduced its single currency, the Euro. For the eleven participating nations, the decision to phase out their national currencies signaled both unprecedented European economic integration, and the possibility of political unity – something not seen since the Roman Empire collapsed 1500 years earlier.1 And for the world beyond Europe, the new currency meant that the global supremacy of the US dollar, a feature of the world economy since 1945, might also have come to an end.
