Jerry – I don’t need the lesson in economics, thanks.

My point, again, concerns France’s behavior and strategy more than Germany’s. You ignore the fact that international trade continues to represent a very small part of France’s economy– IIRC it used to be only 8-9% of French GDP in the late 1990s and is hardly more than that today, if it is indeed higher.

It’s France that has a lock on the ECB and its policy, and the French would probably calculate that the effects of a selloff of US treasuries by Asian central bankers would present more opportunity than harm to their strategy of seeking to knock the US off its perch. The danger that I’ve outlined is so real that the world’s preeminent hedge fund and bond fund managers (Bill Gross of PIMCO, eg) are tailoring their investment strategies accordingly. The money guys are not swayed by sentiment. We should not be, either.