In the process, the inevitable correction of unsustainably large current account imbalances in several major economies is now under way. For example, we project that the U.S. current account deficit will narrow to 3 per cent of GDP in 2009, about half its size in 2006.
*  *  *  Among the major forces that will help shape the euro’s future as a world currency will be the international evolution of the euro area’s key financial counterparty, the United States. I will leave the important interplay between the euro and the dollar - and particularly forecasts of the dollar-euro exchange rate - to more venturesome analysts.