Bloomberg carries comments from Geithner after the Finance Minister’s meeting at the APEC summit.
“We will never use our currency as a tool to gain competitive advantage,” Geithner told reporters today after a meeting of finance ministers from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group in Kyoto, Japan.
The Treasury chief said he believes the dollar, euro and yen are roughly in alignment with each other, and he said American policy makers understand the “special responsibility” the U.S. has for the world economy. “I’m happy to reaffirm again that a strong dollar’s in our interest as a country,” Geithner said.
No, before you all start screaming that the US is the world’s biggest currency manipulator, keep in mind that it did not sell a single dollar on the markets during the Global financial crisis or the European sovereign debt crisis when a strong dollar would have hurt exports, not has it imposed any sorts of capital controls, unlike a myriad of countries have in recent months and years. Lots of countries have loose monetary policies to try and spur domestic demand….The Fed is no different, with the dollar the reserve currency or not.