REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Gisele Dumps Ben

November 6, 2007; Page A18

Wall Street Journal

Ben Bernanke is a married man. But if he weren't, there's at least one woman who wouldn't want anything to do with the Federal Reserve Chairman's policy charms: Gisele Bundchen. The Brazilian supermodel is reportedly now insisting that she be paid in a currency other than the U.S. dollar.

"Contracts starting now are more attractive in euros because we don't know what will happen to the dollar," the model's twin sister and manager in Brazil, Patricia Bundchen, told Bloomberg recently. The ubiquitous runway diva even demanded payment in euros when she signed a contract in August to promote Pantene hair products for Procter & Gamble Co., according to a Brazil magazine. Think about that one: She's willing to sell a U.S. product, but she won't accept payment in U.S. currency.

It's one thing to be rejected by Warren Buffett, who's been predicting the dollar's demotion for years. But it's an ominous sign when dollar weakness becomes ingrained enough in the popular mind for the currency to be spurned by runway models. At least Gisele hasn't yet declared that she prefers the Canadian loonie, which would really be humiliating. That's like being dumped by your date for the PC geek in those Apple Macintosh ads.

This is what happens when the Fed and U.S. Treasury give the impression that the dollar's decline is no big deal, and that a little devaluation might even be useful. Nations start to de-peg from the dollar standard, and people around the world start to dump the greenback. We hope the Fed shapes up before Tom Brady, the New England Patriot quarterback and Gisele's boyfriend, starts demanding that he be paid in euros just to keep up.