So Why the Long Face, Dominique?

COMMENT: We don’t know if this is relat­ed to Dominique Strauss-Kah­n’s recent arrest for alleged sex­u­al assault, but it sure is what we refer to as “Food for Thought, Grounds for Fur­ther Research.”

Did Mr. Strauss-Kahn piss off the “rich and famous”?

“IMF Boss Calls for Glob­al Cur­ren­cy” by Heather Stew­art; The Guardian [UK]; 2/10/2011.

EXCERPT: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, man­ag­ing direc­tor of the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, has called for a new world cur­ren­cy that would chal­lenge the dom­i­nance of the dol­lar and help curb future finan­cial insta­bil­i­ty.

In a speech in Wash­ing­ton, Strauss-Kahn argued that the reserves that mem­ber coun­tries held with the fund could be used, instead of the dol­lar, to price inter­na­tion­al trade. These so-called spe­cial draw­ing rights (SDRs) could also act as an alter­na­tive to the dol­lar in cen­tral banks’ for­eign cur­ren­cy reserves.

“Using the SDR to price glob­al trade and denom­i­nate finan­cial assets would pro­vide a buffer from exchange rate volatil­i­ty,” he said, while “issu­ing SDR-denom­i­nat­ed bonds could cre­ate a poten­tial­ly new class of reserve assets”.

The IMF pub­lished a pol­i­cy paper back­ing Strauss-Kah­n’s views as it gath­ered top-lev­el econ­o­mists for dis­cus­sions on the future of the inter­na­tion­al mon­e­tary sys­tem. . . .