Last Sentence in Financial Times Article on IMF Diverts Attention From Crux of Article: Did the IMF Miss What's Happened in the Last Few Weeks?

The Financial Times web site has an article on it discussing how the International Monetary Fund believes that the Euro and a couple of other currencies are overvalued, the Japanese yen and a couple of others are undervalued, and that the U.S. dollar is somewhere in between.

It goes on to criticize how European governments have little to no input in how the currency is valued against other major world currencies. The Financial Times and the IMF director made their points quite clearly.

Then the final comment of the article in the last sentence of the article came and diverted attention away from the crux of this important monetary issue. Said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF: "The IMF does not expect an explosion in the price of a barrel (of oil)."

HUH??!

Exqueeze me, but what is he talking about? That's already happened! In the last three weeks, oil prices exploded--going from around $87 a barrel on February 6th up to $103.95 today, breaking the all-time record set during the oil embargo of the 1970s. That's a 17% increase in three weeks.

I think what he meant to say is that he's not expecting a 17% jump overnight, though monetary pressures may cause the price of a barrel of oil to increase more slowly, such as how it has in the last three weeks.

But the way it was worded, it made sound like he was way out of touch.