Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said the economic crisis is becoming so pronounced that world leaders will possibly close financial markets while they “rewrite the rules of international finance.” If a new Bretton Woods agreement is being discussed, as Berlusconi says it is, the dollar is in serious trouble.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting in Naples on Friday, Bloomberg reported, Berlusconi announced the idea of “suspending the markets” while a new global economic playbook is hammered out. Berlusconi said that any solution to the world’s economic crisis needed to be a global solution, not just one for Europe.

Although Berlusconi didn’t give any details concerning the new Bretton Wood’s plan, he is not the only European politician who has recently brought up the issue.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has also said 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.” Commenting on this in his September 30 column Robert Morley wrote,

That is a statement with huge implications, coming from another of America’s supposed allies. In July 1944, the Bretton Woods agreement tied the Western democratic economies to America, established the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and helped usher in America’s economic superpower status.A rejection of Bretton Woods is a rejection of America!

A rewrite of the Bretton Woods agreement could end the dollar’s role as the reserve currency and send the dollar plummeting. The question is: Why would Europeans be pushing for such a far-reaching change at a time when financial markets are in chaos? For two related answers to that question, read “Europe in Crisis: World in Danger?” and “Does the EU Want America to Fall?”