It is clear that the euro developed as a defensive mechanism against the dollar, as much as from a Europe-building act of will. And while a strong euro could lead to a massive and unprecedented shift in the world's financial resources from dollars to euros, this, Walker argues, is not a bad thing for America. An end to these irrational gyrations will be good for the global economy, good for the United States, and good for the Atlantic Alliance. Beneath the seeming indecision surrounding the formulation of a viable economic policy is a society remaking itself.
Deregulation is the obvious path to economic revitalization.
But revitalization cannot be accomplished by simply tinkering in the economic sphere. The author suggests that there is increasing recognition in Japan that the whole of hitherto heavily regulated Japanese life needs to be liberated. The editors of World Policy Journal asked four distinguished commentators on economic issues to write about the causes of and possible solutions to Asia's financial crisis. But a solution can be reached through debt rescheduling, debt-equity swaps, and lower interest rates. Ultimately, East Asia will rise again because of this very system, which involves more government activism to promote economic growth and more acknowledged business-government interaction to regulate market forces than in the North Atlantic economies.