In my judgment, the necessary choices will be especially difficult to implement without the restoration of a set of procedural restraints on the budget-making process. For about a decade, the rules laid out in the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 and in the later modifications and extensions of the act provided a framework that helped the Congress establish a better fiscal balance.
The euro will no doubt contribute to enhancing trade and investment within the region and will be a model for other regions in the world. And it will take some time to get clues to what extent the euro will play the role of a key currency and lead to the stability of foreign exchange rates between major currencies.