Dmoz Links Are Worth Gold In Googles Eyes

From the Dmoz blog published earlier this month:

I think we can all agree that the most exciting take away is that search engines love place a different value on free, human edited directories. The point is easily debatable. Perhaps a link in DMOZ is as valuable as any other link on the web or maybe it is worth more.

He also goes on to quote a recent SEO article and adds underscores to the quote he wants to stand out

Getting a site into DMOZ is like Gold. Google loves links from DMOZ and your site will reap the benefits.

I find it very strange for them to quote a SEO article and tell people Google gives more weight to DMOZ then other directories and even more strange to place value on that. It actually contradicts what I have heard search engineers from Google say publicly. I guess they would know though since they power the Google Business Directory.