Washington - (Disaqster Mess): A former KGB agent and former French socialist finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn has somehow wormed his way into the top job at the IMF today.
Strauss-Kahn, 69, was appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund having promised to clean out the coffers of the 'pointless old anachronism' in the words of former Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs.
Mr Strauss-Kahn, 64, once tipped Valerie Giscard d'Estaing into the Elysee Palace swimming pool after a post-Oscars dinner fist fight over who would have the first shag with fifties movie starlet Brigitte Bardot.
He replaces Rodrigo de Rato a former Spanish finance minister whose glittering career highlights at the IMF consisted of foiling three Interpol investigations of money laundering, embezzlement, fraud and a possible drive-by shooting attempt of a political opponent.
Speaking of his successor today Rato said:
"Strauss-Kahn possesses the charm, loquacity and ability to bypass a Polygraph test that is so vital for this top-notch public service position."
The appointment was nodded through last week by US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson who assured President Bush that Strauss-Kahn's candidacy would "erase any remaining files that the CIA may have omitted from shredding" that link the Bush family to organised crime cartels going back the the early 1900s.
"He will make the bold reforms necessary to lead a strong and irrelevant fund well into the future and guaranteed obscurity," Paulson promised.
Strauss-Kahn meanwhile has pledged to ensure that the IMF faces a continuing crisis of illegitimacy which happily underpins Paulson's instructions from the White House.
Paul Wolfowitz meanwhile has become incontinent.
