March 12, 2008: Nothing seems to stop the rise of the euro in relation to the U.S. dollar. With today's exchange rate at $1.55 to 1.00 €, the value of the euro reached another all time high. The euro's strength is evident when seen in relation to the currencies it replaced, especially the German mark. The historic low of the dollar to the mark was on April 19, 1995, when $1 was worth 1.36 DM. Today's euro-dollar rate translates into a dollar-mark exchange rate of $1 to 1.26 DM, which would have been unthinkable during the Reagan presidency when the dollar was worth more than 3 German marks at one point.

Another comparison would be to the euro's low point against the dollar, which was in October 2000. One dollar then was worth only 82 U.S. cents. Since then, the euro has appreciated some 80 percent in relation to the dollar. Economists and foreign exchange experts caution that the euro is overvalued. That is no doubt true, but so was the dollar for years, and that did not seem to worry people.

Just as remarkable as the euro's turnaround since 2000 is the current view of former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Prior to the euro's introduction, opponents of the euro in Germany were quick to quote Greenspan as one of their key "witnesses" on the folly of the new currency. In an interview on May 2, 1997, Greenspan told the "International Herald Tribune": "The euro will come, but will not be sustainable." His prediction was plastered on anti-euro posters and used in newspaper ads at the end of the last millennium in a last-ditch effort to save the German mark.

Ten years later, it is obvious that Greenspan has changed his mind, and not just because he no longer has a responsibility to defend his country's currency. At the beginning of 2007 the value of the dollar notes in circulation was less than the value of euro notes, and the volume of foreign currency reserves held in dollars was declining slowly in favor of the euro. Last September Greenspan told the German magazine "Stern" that the euro has the potential to replace the dollar as the world's leading reserve currency. That's quite a statement from a man who only ten years earlier had predicted that the euro would not be sustainable.