Euro exporters: Someone else’s problem

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has had a hard time convincing his European colleagues that asking the US to shore up the dollar is a bright idea. Part of his difficulty is that Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, feel that all they might get from Washington would be a repeat of John Connally’s famous quip more than thirty years ago: «It’s our currency, but it’s your problem», the then-US Treasury Secretary told the complaining Europeans. ...