By the end of this year the dollar and the euro may be equal to each other, experts of Goldman Sachs and Bank of America predict. They believe that in December the common currency of the European Union will cost 0.95 dollars.
At the same time, they are not even bothered by the fact that the expected refusal of the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in September, or at least until the end of the year, has led to a rise in the euro against the dollar to a seven-month high. During the week that has passed since the publication of the protocols of July's Federal Reserve meeting, held on August 19, the US currency has dropped by 4.5%.
Vestnik Kavkaza learned the opinion of Russian experts about how real the prospect of achieving parity between the dollar and euro is. Chairman of the Board of the National Currency Organization Dmitry Piskulov said that "this discussion goes back to last year, when the euro began to drop against the dollar and passed the critically important level of 1.25-1.2, and went to the level of 1.1-1.05."
"This was connected to the fact that the expected rate of growth of the European and American economies are different. The market expects that the EU as a whole will continue to experience low growth rates, close to recession. A number of countries already have a recession, there are a number of countries which are getting out of one. At the same time, American and international analysts believe and expect that America will show higher growth rates as soon as macroeconomic factors – the labor market and industrial production level – will be ready for this," he said.
In his turn, leading researcher of the Institute of Applied Economic Research of RANHiGS Alexander Abramov sees no special prerequisites for the implementation of such a scenario in reality. "I do not think it's an entirely realistic situation. Because in this case, it seems to me, America will not cope with Europe. To achieve parity of the dollar and the euro now means a major devaluation of the euro against the dollar. I think that today the American economy is facing different challenges. Especially against the background of rising interest rates, it is simply impossible. Firstly, America will not give such an advantage to European producers. Secondly, it is difficult to imagine that this will happen in conditions of faster growth of interest rates in the US compared to Europe," he believes.
