The charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn concern allegations of purely personal misdeeds but they have global economic implications. The arrest of the managing director of the International Monetary Fund is likely to be a significant marker in Europe’s relative decline.

The IMF was becoming less Eurocentric anyway. The voting share of European Union members was cut by 2.8 percentage points in the recapitalisation agreed during the financial crisis. The presumption that the boss is always European – all 10 of them have been since 1946 – was also supposed to be dropped.

But DSK has brought only limited globalisation to the IMF. In part, that is because his greatest love still seems to be French politics. Also, he has led the institution into an excessively intimate involvement with the EU’s rescue of its own troubled members. It has hardly challenged the European line that controlled defaults are tragedies to be avoided at all costs.