Is the Euro Ready to Play the Global Currency Role?

Financial integration, the driver of contemporary globalization, has accelerated considerably since the early 1990s and shows in the trend toward larger external assets and liabilities, which is especially relevant for industrial countries where, relative to output, both average external assets and liabilities about tripled between 1990 and 2003, reaching levels of more than 200 per cent by the end of the period (IMF 2005: 110).