Strauss-Kahn Bailouts Give IMF Chief Popularity Over Sarkozy

As the dinner plates were cleared on a May night in Basel, Switzerland, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and his fellow guests settled in for a challenging final course: saving the euro from extinction.

Strauss-Kahn, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and Bank of Italy Governor Mario Draghi had gathered with other central bankers at the headquarters of the Bank for International Settlements for a regular bimonthly meeting. They were waiting for word from Brussels, where European Union finance ministers were racing to assemble an emergency rescue program to restore investor confidence in the single currency, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its March issue.