THE DOLLAR IS DOWN. Oil is up. America is running huge trade and budget deficits. The Japanese are intervening massively in the currency markets to prevent the yen from rising, and the Chinese show no signs of abandoning the renminbi’s peg to the dollar. So the euro is bearing the brunt of the dollar’s decline, making euroland goods less competitive and snuffing out any signs of a European recovery.

That should give the G-7 finance ministers something to talk about when they convene next month in Boca Raton, Florida. But very little on which they can agree. For one thing, there is a fundamental difference in the policy outlook of the United States and that of its fellow-members of the industrialized nations’, rich man’s club