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Mr Sarkozy spared no sensitivities as he launched into a full-blown attack on the Bush Administration. "The dollar cannot remain solely the problem of others. If we are not careful, monetary disarray could morph into economic war. We would all be its victims," he said.

Notice this anti-US leftist garbage-wrapper calls this "a full-blown attack on the Bush Administration."

Stephen Jen, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said the dollar fall had become alarming. "This has been driven so far by Middle Eastern and Asian central banks, but there is a risk that hedge funds will start to join in, and they can be very powerful," he said. "The most dangerous threat is that the yen will snap back and destroy the 'carry trade' before anybody has a chance to unwind positions."

I've been seeing topics about the impending collapse of the US economy here on FR, and this has gone on for some time now. There was indeed at least one topic about the inevitable dumping of US securities by the Chinese.

The dollar's dive came after comments by Cheng Siwei, vice-chair of China's Congress, suggesting that Beijing would switch more of its $1,340bn reserves away from US bonds. "The euro is rising and the dollar is weakening, and we can achieve a better match of the two," he said.

And of course, there was at least one topic about how the OPEC nations were going to abandon pricing of oil in dollars in favor of Euro pricing -- a change that took place years ago.

Simon Derrick, a strategist at Bank of New York Mellon, said it appeared to be a slip of the tongue: "The last thing the Chinese need now is a rapidly falling dollar. Their inflation is already running at 6.2pc." Mr Derrick said the world was on the cusp of a full-blown currency crisis. "The Fed is caught between a rock and hard place. It can't keep rates high enough to fight inflation because of the sub-prime crisis."

The banks, IOW, have supplanted the Fed; or more accurately, the Fed has enough brains not to pull a Hoover.

Mr Sarkozy's words were undoubtedly directed at the European Central Bank before today's interest rate meeting. A German-led group of bank governors is pressing for a rate rise before inflation gets out of hand. Any such move would set off a political storm in Europe.

Undoubtedly the article's author buried the lead.

Mr Sarkozy's comments came after the French luxury goods group LVMH said it was moving production to India. Airbus stands to lose €100m in profits for every one cent rise in the euro, a loss of €1.2bn since August.