Up to a point. I should have qualified that, but if I qualified every statement I made here that needed qualifying, this would turn into a book. What I would say is: quite a few European leaders would have liked it if they could have replaced the dollar relatively painlessly and not too fast. But it was not a priority to much of anyone, let alone a driving need. In fact, the last two generations of politicians in Europe have grown in the tradition of minor valutas, and in a situation such as the last few years', it would have been their instinct to let the exchange rate fall or inflation rise or both. The existence of the euro made that impossible - and indeed, that was one of the reasons why it was created - but the instincts don't die in a day, and when the Greek disaster came, there must have been many European leaders who thought, even if they did not say it, "well, it could have happened at a much worse time". The lack of drive cleaning up the Greek mess tells the same story: European leaders don't feel the decline of the Euro as a major threat, and don't feel an urge to stop it. Indeed, the very fact that Greece - among other weak economies - was admitted to the Eurozone in the first place tells the same story: if the making the Euro a rival to the dollar as world reserve currency had been a heartfelt need and a real priority, Italy and Spain would have struggled to get in , and the likes of Latvia and Greece would not even have been considered.