But if the failure of Maastricht represented a collective drawing-back by Europe from a specific plan of integration, it has not turned back the clock, or even stopped it. Instead, the integrative process has gone forward on a contingent, ad-hoc basis. What Elfriede Regelsberger called the "pragmatic evolutionary" model of further European integration has been followed in practice, embodying "a limited widening and incremental deepening" of the integration of the European Community's collective economy. "A Fistful of Pfennigs." The Economist (March 4, 1995), 77. From 1968 until 1980, the dollar depreciated at a nearly constant rate against the D-Mark, falling from the fixed-rate value of 4.0 to about 1.75. From 1980 to 1985, as inflation was brought under control in the United States, the dollar recovered to nearly 3.0. By 1987, however, it had fallen back to just below its 1980 level before stabilizing somewhat. From that time till 1994, it dropped slowly, with occasional upswings, and stood at about 1.6 DM at the beginning of 1994. In the course of 1994 it went into steeper decline, and was in the neighborhood of 1.45 at the beginning of the recent turbulent plunge. Turning from the purely intra-European arena, one area of persisting German anxiety has been the relationship between the D-Mark and the dollar. Over the entire period of floating exchange rates, since 1968, the dollar has dropped from a valuation of 4 D-Marks, its setting during the postwar era of fixed rates, to 1.3837 D-marks to the dollar, as of April 20, 1995. |
