It has long been a parlor game guessing how many of his American nemeses Castro will bury before finally going to that great sugar-cane farm in the sky. Unless Jimmy Carter chokes on a peanut or Bill Clinton gets in bed with an athletic 22-year-old, the final number looks like it is going to be six.

As he nears his own death, one wonders if the newly God-fearing Castro doesn't find less satisfaction than he used to in the passing of an American President, especially this one. Gerald Ford once called Castro an "international outlaw" and threatened "appropriate action" against Cuban troops in foreign countries, but it was also Ford who forbade government-sponsored assassinations in a landmark 1976 presidential directive. True, it was applied under enormous public and Congressional pressure led by Senator Frank Church. But it was still Ford's signature that removed the large CIA-sponsored bulls-eye from the center of Castro's forehead. The flurry of restrictions on black-ops and oversight rules signed by Ford didn't mean we stopped assisting rogue anti-Castro elements in Miami-Dade, but officially we weren't in the assassination business anymore. That was something. It was a big something, actually, and for a long time.

Alas, not anymore. The current administration was the first to turn its back on Ford's executive orders banning state-sponsored assassinations and establishing intelligence oversight, and it's worth remembering that Ford's most important legacy died a violent death several years before he did. With at least two more years of Bush-Cheney lawlessness to go, we can at least be thankful for that other major Ford legacy: The rehab clinic.

"The justices debated at length over this question ... the aim of the ruling is to find social peace and show that a consensus is possible over difficult questions affecting the community," the court said in a statement.

The decision follows a test case involving Juan Massa who sued the government and the BankBoston after his US$184,475 (£94,041) savings were frozen in 2002, La Nación newspaper reported. According to the supreme court's calculations, Mr Massa will receive 3.08 pesos for every US dollar invested, roughly equal to the current exchange rate.

In December five years ago, Argentinians angry with years of economic problems took to the streets and forced the resignation of the president, Fernando de la Rua. Three more presidents came to power and were ousted in less than two weeks.

During the chaos, the government untied the Argentinian peso from the US dollar to which it had been pegged on a one-to-one basis. The peso's value plummeted as foreign investors fled the mayhem and authorities froze bank accounts in an attempt to stem the exodus of funds. The peso finally stabilised at the rate of around three pesos to one dollar, meaning savers' pesos are only worth a third of their pre-crisis value.

Since then it has been a regular event for aggrieved lower and middle income savers to march through the financial centre of Buenos Aires and other cities moving from bank to bank banging hammers and empty pots on the shuttered doors and windows. Their anger has been further heightened by stories of trucks loaded with dollars leaving the country in the days before the asset restrictions came into effect as the more prescient - or those with government contacts - removed their money from the country.

La Nación said the country's justice system has been inundated by more than 300,000 savers who have lodged cases, 60,000 of which have reached the high court.

Among the banks most affected during the crisis were Argentina's Banco Galicia and Banco Rio, the local unit of Spanish banking group Santander, as well as BankBoston and Citibank.

One saver outside the courthouse celebrated the ruling, but bemoaned the long legal struggle to protect her assets.

"In real terms, I think this is pretty close to giving us our savings back," she told Reuters TV. "But the issue is what comes next, if they will compensate us for the pain and suffering that not having access to our savings for five years has caused," she added.

How will Chirac be remembered in France?

Chirac was elected, at his third attempt, in 1995. France was then a fractiously divided nation, with high unemployment and no consensus on how to adapt to the new global economy, while preserving what was most successful, and most French, about France. There was an alarming contempt for mainstream politicians and institutions and a drift to the demagogic and blindly nationalist extremes of right and left. Chirac promised to heal the "social fracture" of the nation.

Eleven years and seven months later, France is exactly where it was in 1995. If anything, the country's democratic health has declined. Cynicism and the attraction of the blind alleys of far right and far left have grown.

Domestically, the Chirac years will go down as 12 years of wasted time. A couple of attempts at timid economic and social reform were interrupted by a co-habitation with a Socialist government, whose monument is the shorter, 35-hour working week (something detested by the centre-right). The suburban riots last year showed that little has been done to heal the "social fracture" of France.

It would be unfair to say that Chirac fiddled while France burned. He dithered while France drifted.

And what is Chirac's record abroad?

Jacques Chirac will always be remembered abroad for having had the guts and foresight to resist the American-British invasion of Iraq in March 2003. He was monstered in the American and British press at the time for being a) a bad ally b) in financial hock to Saddam Hussein c) anti-American.

Let us recall what Chirac actually said. There is no urgent need to topple Saddam. Occupation of Iraq will be a nightmare. We should concentrate on the struggle against Bin-Ladenism. Real friends and allies do not blindly follow but point out possibly calamitous errors.

Americans especially might care to consider who was the more valuable (though ignored) ally in 2003, Jacques Chirac or Tony Blair. That being said, the rest of Chiraquian foreign policy, and especially European policy, has been incoherent.

President Chirac has failed to advance the "multi-polar" world - ie a world not dominated by American interests and values - which he preached in 2003. He even contributed to a significant defeat for "multi-polarism", the crippling of the European Union. Chirac pushed for a European constitution and then lost interest. He called a referendum on the constitution in France and failed to sell the idea to his "chers compatriotes". The referendum "Non" vote in May 2005 was a devastating blow to the EU and, de facto, the end of Chirac's influence at home and abroad.

Is there anything positive to say?

Yes. President Chirac, with one or two, mild electorally-driven lapses, has always been a fierce enemy or racism and the extreme right. He was the first French president to admit that the apparatus of the French state was complicit in the Holocaust during the collaborationist, Vichy regime of 1940-44.

Anything else?

He has personally saved the lives of over 9,000 French people. President Jacques Chirac decided to make road safety one of the pet issues of his second term of office in 2002. Since then French road safety laws, especially the speeding rules, have been properly enforced for the first time. The impact on road deaths has been dramatic. By the end of this year, the number of lives saved since 2002 will be well over 9,000.

Does Chirac face the prospect of jail when he leaves office?

Hardly. He may face prosecution for alleged illegal political fund-raising (on a heroic scale) when he was Mayor of Paris from 1974-1995. During his term in the Elysée, he has been protected by his presidential immunity. Several former confidantes in the town hall, including the former prime minister, Alain Juppé, have been convicted of organising, or being aware of, various scams to divert Paris tax-payers' money into the coffers of Chirac's neo-Gaullist party (now defunct), the Rassemblement pour la Républiqe (RPR). None of those convicted has been sent to jail. If a prosecution is brought against Chirac, it will probably limp along for years and end, at most, in a suspended sentence and fine.

Is there a Chirac legacy? Will he have monument?

Presidents De Gaulle, Giscard, Mitterrand, in their different ways, left their fingerprints on France. Chirac's lasting influence will be negligible. He managed to unite almost all the squabbling factions of the centre-right within one party, the Union Pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), but that party was almost immediately stolen from him by Nicolas Sarkozy. Four years after the UMP was created as a vehicle for Chirac, the party is a Sarkozian glee club. Its slogan is "Imagine France afterwards". After whom? one might ask.

De Gaulle has an airport and a square. Pompidou has his modern arts centre and a fast road beside the Seine. Mitterrand has a library and a short section of Seine quay beside the Louvre. What will Paris name after Jacques Chirac?

The city might consider renaming the Rue Vaugirard on the Left Bank. The street is one of the oldest in Paris. It rambles on forever, twists and turns in various directions and then ends nowhere in particular. Perfect for a Rue Jacques Chirac.

What can be said for and against Jacques Chirac's record in office?

For...

* He stood up to George Bush and Tony Blair at the United Nations on Iraq, for reasons that have proved correct

* He saved thousands of French lives by seeing that the road safety laws were properly enforced for the first time

* He has a sound record on resisting racism and extremism

Against...

* His presidency has failed to grapple with France's economic and social problems

* He weakened the EU by pushing for a constitition, calling a referendum in France and then losing it

* His presidency had reinforced cynicism about politicians in France