Polls had him in 2nd place over Sarkozy for French Prez

From Eric Dondero:

By some polls head of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn was getting as much as 17% of the French vote in second place behind Marine Le Pen but ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy. He was the expected Socialist Party candidate for president in next year's election.

Now he has been busted in New York for repeatedly assaulting an African-American maid at a posh French-owned hotel. He allegedly forced her to perform sex acts on him. He was pulled off a jet plane on its way to Paris by NYC PD moments before take-off.

From the NY Post "IMF head Strauss-Kahn charged with attempted rape of hotel maid":

The trouble began around noon today, when a housekeeper entered Strauss-Kahn’s room at the Sofitel on West 44th Street.

Strauss-Kahn was in his bathroom, said sources. He emerged from the bathroom naked, said the sources, and grabbed her.

Then, Strauss-Kahn allegedly threw the housekeeper on the room’s bed and forced her to perform oral sex on him, said the sources.

Strauss-Kahn let the maid leave — and soon afterward, headed off to Kennedy Airport for his flight to Paris.

Scheduled to have a private meeting with Germany's Angela Merkel

Somewhat bizarrely, Strauss-Kahn was scheduled to meet with Germany's Angela Merkel today.

From the WSJ "Germany's Merkel To Meet IMF's Strauss-Kahn Sunday":

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet Sunday with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, to discuss a number of key issues including the European debt crisis.

As well as the problems of the euro zone, the two will discuss the upcoming summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, the group of 20 most industrialized and emerging economies, Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said at a regular government press conference Friday.

Merkel hopes to get to know Strauss-Kahn's opinion on Greece, Portugal and Ireland, Seibert said.

Strauss was an advocate for greater dependency on the European Union and away from sovereignty for Euro nations. He clammored for a much larger IMF central budget with larger contributions from rich nations like Germany.

"It is time to create a level playing field for European workers, especially in the area of labour taxation, social benefits systems and portability, and employment protection legislation.”

Strauss-Kahn according to the London Guardian, had steered the IMF in recent years away from laissez-faire, towards an aggressively interventionist course.

The IMF suffered from three big problems in the period before the former French finance minister took over in the autumn of 2007: it had been ideologically wedded to the free-market philosophy of financial liberalisation that caused the world's banking system to implode; it had suffered from weak leadershipp; and it was short of money.

Strauss-Kahn moved the fund in a more progressive direction...

Now talk is emerging that his logical replacement would be former UK Labor Party leader Gordon Brown.

Brown would be the obvious European choice to continue Strauss-Kahn's work. Brown chaired the IMF's keep policy committee for almost a decade when he was chancellor and believes the fund should actively intervene to tackle poverty and make the global economy less unstable.

Though, the Guardian notes UK Prime Minister and Tory Party leader David Cameron is likely to oppose such a move.