WASHINGTON (MNI) – The following is a transcript of Treasury
Secretary Tim Geithner’s remarks on the dollar to the Commonwealth Club
in Palo Alto Monday afternoon:
Q: Are you concerned with all of the money being printed over the
last couple of years, if we’re on our way to debasing the value of the
dollar?
Geithner: Not going to happen in this country. It is very important
for people to understand that the United States of America and no
country around the world can devalue its way to prosperity and
competitiveness. It is not a viable feasible strategy and we will not
engage in it. It is very important to us that people have confidence in
our capacity to meet our long-term fiscal obligations, to make sure the
Federal Reserve does its job of keeping inflation low and safe over
time. And we recognize that the U.S. plays a particularly important
special role in the international financial system because the dollar
serves as the principal reserve asset of the global financial system. So
we’re going to work very hard to make sure that we preserve confidence
in the strong dollar and we’re working very hard to strengthen
confidence in our capacity and Washington’s capacity, as I said, to
repair the damage caused by this crisis and restore as we recover a
sense of discipline, gravity, balance to our long term fiscal situation.
Q – Do you see a time, Mr. Secretary, when the dollar is not the
world’s reserve currency?
Geithner: Not in our lifetime. Of course the world’s going through
a very dramatic, very important set of changes in the basic balance of
power of economic activity around the world. You know most of the
growth’s going to come from the world’s most populous, the rapidly
growing emerging economies. That’s going to be true for a long period of
time. But I think that can happen in a way that makes the U.S. stronger
too. Again, the most important thing we in the United States is again
just keep working on trying to make sure we’re improving our long-run
growth prospects and restore a basic sense of discipline and balance to
our long-term fiscal position.
** Market News International Washington Bureau: 202-371-2121 **
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