US relishes euro advent

The US financial sector is bracing to gain from the euro - the European single currency - and remains confident the new money will not displace the dollar as the international reserve currency.

"It's brilliant," said Mr Howard Lutnick, president of the financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, stressing that the euro's advent will create the first-ever real counterpart to the US bond market in 11 European Union nations.

"Euro is like a child that grows," he said. "It will take 40 years before it turns into a reserve currency," and thus rivals the dollar in that capacity.

"Everyone that thinks otherwise is dreaming."

Columbia University economics professor Mr Robert Mundell recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that "diversification from the dollar to the euro would begin once confidence in the policies of the new European Central Bank were established," including the ability to enforce strict fiscal discipline.