euros

The euro is overvalued and the European Central Bank needs a political counterweight to compensate for the fact that is it ”ultra-powerful”, the head of International Monetary Fund was quoted as saying on Monday. IMF director general Dominique Strauss-Kahn praised the ECB for containing inflation, but told Le Monde newspaper that eurozones countries needed to appoint a political supremo to make sure economic growth was promoted. ”The problem with the euro is that the European Central Bank, which does a good job controlling inflation, is ultra-powerful,” Strauss-Kahn was quoted as saying.

Easily missed amid the rising outcry over oil prices is the fact that they have only been skyrocketing in dollar terms. Priced in euros—or yen, or pounds sterling—the cost of a barrel of oil has risen much less over the past decade. At recent meetings of OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, ministers disputed whether oil should be sold in euros instead of dollars (WashPost), in light of the dollar’s recent decline. Officials from Venezuela, Iran, and Algeria called for a switch. But Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, both of which hold huge dollar reserves, urged caution, and the bloc concluded the meetings saying it would further study (FT) the impact of the falling dollar on its member states.