OPEP Revaluing oil

A sign of the times: the price of oil dips below $50 a barrel and the world cheers, even though prices are still more than twice their average during the 1990s. Another sign of the times: the world’s seven largest industrialised countries are putting the heat on China to revalue its currency. The need for a renminbi revaluation against the dollar, as US Treasury Secretary John Snow put it over the weekend, is «urgent». Oil prices and the renminbi may not seem to be related. But they are. Asia’s...