When leaders of the 11 nations that agreed to combine their currencies gathered in January 1999,
they predicted great things: the single currency would shift global portfolios to euro assets,
depressing the value of the dollar relative to the euro, and the new eurozone would be a strong
player in the global economy, reflecting the size of an integrated European market. Instead the
euro plummeted, Europes economy remains weak, and unemployment is more than twice the
U.S. level.