MacroScope

The euro zone sovereign debt crisis has not made a near-term collapse of the bloc any more  likely, a survey on hihifrds.com, a website devoted to the Thomson Reuters FX and money markets trading community, suggests.

The survey asked whether all 16 countries currently using the euro would still be doing so by the end of 2012. Fully 88 percent of respondents said they would.

Maybe the 16 euro zone members are tied to the single currency for now but others have more choice. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and  his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva have  agreed to consider how to make more use  of their own currencies in bilateral trade, rather than the euro or dollar.

“Neither the dollar nor the euro, nor any other currency, can claim to be a universal currency that protects all states,” Medvedev said.