Dollar death watch continues.

With the U.S. National Debt over $8 trillion, and our trade deficit exceeding $742 billion (more than 7 percent of our Gross National Product), central bankers "from Stockholm to Abu Dhabi [are] seeking shelter from the falling dollar," reported Bloomberg News Service on May 15. "Sweden's Riksbank said [in April] that it had almost halved its dollar holdings in favor of the euro, and central banks in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates said they were buying Europe's common currency."

The euro is making a serious bid to displace the dollar as the global reserve currency chiefly because of the fact that Washington, despite its claim to be the capital of a free-market society, is more profligate in its spending and indebtedness than the overtly socialist governments of Europe. "Almost 60 percent of central banks that changed their reserves last year boosted euro holdings, and almost four in 10 shed dollars," notes Bloomberg.