By late Tuesday London time, the article had sent the U.S. dollar plunging 0.8 percent, marking the weakest Dollar-Euro and Dollar-Yen exchange rates this year. Officials of the nations implicated in the article spent the day firmly denying its veracity. Saudi Arabia’s central bank chief Muhammad al-Jasser impugned the newspaper account as “Absolutely incorrect.” And Russia's deputy finance minister Dmitry Pankin insisted, "We did not discuss this at all." The report’s credibility has been further disputed since it alludes to sources in Gulf Arab states and the Hong Kong banking sector, but does not cite anyone specifically.

Jane Foley, research director at Forex.com, has called the publication a “Plot against the dollar as the world’s most dominant reserve currency.” Yet even if the report is proved spurious, it is becoming increasingly evident that the dollar is in danger.

First, while this multi-nation pact may be apocryphal, individual nations are indeed diversifying from U.S. mintage. In March, China called for the dollar to be replaced by a new currency reserve controlled by the International Monetary Fund. In July, Russia—who has already significantly decreased the greenbacks in its reserves—declared the dollar system “flawed” and proposed the adoption of a new international reserve currency. And late in September, Iran announced that its foreign currency reserves would be permanently transitioned from dollars to euros.

Figures are also revealing an atrophying dollar. Last week the International Monetary Fund indicated that the dollar's share of total reserves is at its lowest level since 1995. Robert Zoellick, World Bank president grimly admitted that one of the results of the financial crisis could be a “recognition of changed economic power relations."

The United Nations appears to already be making that recognition. Tuesday, a high-level United Nations commission on the international economic crisis called for a new global reserve currency to end dollar dominance, which it stated has provided the United States the "privilege" of building up a profound trade deficit. Like the purported clandestine multi-nation talks, the commission is urging the dollar to be supplanted by a shared basket of currencies.

Such a shift would send the already weakened U.S. economy into greater distress. With the dollar no longer functioning as the reserve currency, the U.S. would no longer enjoy borrowing money or purchasing commodities at lower rates than other nations. The supremacy of the dollar—which has been virtually uncontested since the end of WWII—could be at an end.

Interestingly, as the dollar slumps, Gold is burgeoning. On Tuesday as Wall Street investors panicked over the dollar, the precious metal achieved a record high of $1,045 per ounce. Since January the metal has gained 18 percent and is well on its way to its ninth consecutive annual gain. It is a rally the likes of which hasn’t been seen since at least 1948. Some analysts are even predicting that this growth is just the beginning. John Brynjolfsson, the chief investment officer of Armored Wolf LLC, a hedge fund in California, has confidently asserted, “It’s pretty clear that gold will be at $2,000 by 2012, and it could happen a lot faster.”