Interesting PHOTO: Strauss-Kahn with the Obamas

Business Insider posted this photograph, of former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn meeting the Obamas, saying it was NYMag that discovered it from the IMF's Flickr page.

Barack Obama's face and hand say it all, the caption says, tongue-in-cheek.

Strauss-Kahn to get $250,000 severance pay: Meanwhile, reports said that Strauss-Kahn, who quit after being charged with sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York, will receive $250,000 severance payment, but American taxpayers are not too happy paying part of it.

Strauss-Kahn is also due to be handed a pension. US Congressmen reacted angrily to the deal but conceded they are almost powerless to stop it from going ahead.

The IMF said that it had no choice in the matter since the severance pay is part of his contract.

"What does it say about the IMF that its managing director has a higher annual salary than the president of the United States, that he stays at $3,000-per-night hotel rooms, and that he gets a quarter of a million dollars in severance pay while awaiting charges for attempted rape?" Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers asked in a statement to FOX News.

Jim Specht, spokesman for House Appropriations Committee member Rep Jerry Lewis said that his boss will explore if something can be done to extend US leverage over the IMF operations.

"The IMF isn't doing what it's really supposed to be doing... Creating economic opportunity in undeveloped countries," Specht said.

The former IMF chief, who was indicted on seven counts including attempted rape, allegedly forced the maid at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan to perform oral sex.

He was taken into custody a few minutes before his Air France flight departed for Paris.

Meanwhile, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde announced her candidacy for head of the International Monetary Fund.

There has been a debate about whether the next head of the IMF should continue to be from a European country or a developing nation.

European Union leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have said they want a European to be in-charge during a time when European countries are dealing with a debt crisis.

In a statement, the directors of Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa said that next director of the IMF should be chosen on the basis of competence and not on the basis of nationality.

"This requires abandoning the obsolete unwritten convention that requires that the head of the IMF be necessarily from Europe," they said.

The nomination period for the post ends on June 10. -- PTI

Image: International Monetary Fund's Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn with United States President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for the G-20 official dinner September 24, 2009 at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Photograph: International Monetary Fund/Stephen Jaffe