There were two stories this month that will have world-shaping implications. The first was in a Paris hospital and a compound in Ramallah. The other, unfolding in the world's foreign exchange dealing rooms, hardly made it beyond the business pages, but deserves to be taken just as seriously. We witnessed the storm warnings of what promises to be a financial crisis of epic proportions, threatening both the US and the EU.
Europe and Asia have both been on the receiving end of massive foreign currency speculation for the past 20 years and the countries concerned have been left badly scarred. Italy, France and the UK have suffered currency crises that have overshadowed their politics for years. In Asia, the experiences of Indonesia and South Korea tell a similar story.
The one country to have blithely sailed on through all this turbulence has been the US, but that is what is about to change. The political consequences for US President George W. Bush promise to be every bit as difficult as they have been for other governments. The dollar has been insulated because it is the linchpin of the international financial system. The US possesses the currency that is the everyday unit of account in international trade and finance; even al-Qaeda uses it to finance its terror network.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/11/17/2003211451