Is the € the new $?

This article in Time Magazine is asking the provocative question in this time of economic and financial crisis: is the euro progressively replacing the U.S. dollar as the world's leading currency? generally I would think it's still far from being the case but with Barack Obama's bent on printing a lot of greenbacks to finance his rescue package for the U.S. economy, the question will probably become more and more pertinent.

Unquestionably the swelling U.S. budget deficit will bring a lot of foreign investors to question the soundness of U.S. public finance and to reconsider their investing money into U.S. Treasuries for fear of seeing their value founder with the dollar and perhaps even the U.S. Treasury credit ratings loosing their rock-solid AAA status. As the recent credit crisis has just spectacularly demonstrated, this could very well happen suddendly and catastrophically in the next two years... and what Barack Obama giveth to the middle classes, inflation shall taketh away.