Are Iran, Russia, China behind dollar's free-fall? by FROM World Net Daily

Although the author of the book Currency Wars states that the Federal Reserve is privately owned, a belief encountered on occasion, it is not really clear to me how independent of the government the Fed actually is. According to Wikepedia "The chairman is appointed for a four-year term by the President of the United States, subject to confirmation by the Senate."

WASHINGTON – The hottest selling book in China right now [Oct 2007] is called "Currency Wars," which makes the case that the U.S. Federal Reserve is a puppet of the Rothschilds banking dynasty and it has persuaded some top officials Beijing should resist America's demands to appreciate its own undervalued currency, the yuan.

This might not be news of concern to most Americans if the U.S. dollar were not in precipitous free-fall, having reached record lows against the euro yesterday.

What would it mean if China ever threw its economic weight around by dumping dollars in a major way?

Selected Vocabulary
appreciate
free-fall
spiraling downward
nuclear option
sell-off
"back-of-the-envelope" calculation