By Patrick J. Buchanan

“Laissez-faire is finished, the all-powerful market that is always right, that’s finished,” said Nicholas Sarkozy, speaking ex cathedra, last month.

As a result, said the diminutive French president, it is “necessary to rebuild the entire global financial and monetary system from the bottom up, the way it was done at Bretton Woods after World War II.”

Sarky’s history is a bit off. The Bretton Woods Agreements were actually signed in July 1944, when German troops still occupied Paris, a month before France was liberated by the Americans, who let Charles de Gaulle and the Free French do the honors.