Look at the US budget deficit. Then look at the Treasury auctions and the buyers. Then think about the desperation t bring down the oil price. Now the Israeli defense minsiter saying no strike. The US is essentially incapable economically of doing anything. The Russians are saying they are diversifiying away from the dollar (not shocking afte trhey sold Agencies). The US may be militarily great,. but it is economically meak, and not just from a recessionary cyclcial standpojnt. The US economic situation is broken and the atempt to renew the Bretton Woods II system will fail. VDH has it right, the US and its friends better start thinking about a way to re-engineer the system to quickly. I am not sanguine. As the situation with the GSEs show, the foreign Sovs have won a vote over US domestic and foreign policy. Putin knows it. China knows it. Chavez knows it. The only people in denial are those still bathing in the specter of a smart bomb while the IEDs in the form of dollar reserves grow by the minute. The US franking privilage is going away and that is a far graver threat than Georgian kleptocracy, notwithstanding Russian brutality.