Now, tiny little quibble of a footnote Sonny Bono, you might say, was a Republican, but I don't buy it.

Who could quibble with such an innocent statement? Without the discoveries of nineteenth century physicists and their successors, we could hardly imagine today s world no electrical power grid, no televisions, no satellites, no iPads.

The US legal system independent from the executive and legislative branches of government further supports the dollar s global role. While one might quibble about the complexity of US laws and regulations, it cannot be said that they are not applied relatively consistently.

Defenders of the French system quibble over labor cost statistics in their efforts to prove that France is not so different from its main European trading partners. But the facts of the last decade including a significant loss of export market share and a 5 of GDP deterioration in the current account balance paint a different picture.