Wednesday, March 17, 2010

China currency manipulation

Paul Krugman has some harsh words for China about their undervalued currency, blaming the Chinese for dragging out the worldwide recession.

He says, "And it’s a policy that seriously damages the rest of the world. Most of the world’s large economies are stuck in a liquidity trap — deeply depressed, but unable to generate a recovery by cutting interest rates because the relevant rates are already near zero. China, by engineering an unwarranted trade surplus, is in effect imposing an anti-stimulus on these economies, which they can’t offset."

So what can the US do? He wants Washington to get serious about it. But China has rebuffed a lot of the currency accusations and scolded the US about trying to lecture Beijing on economic policy. Interestingly, Krugman points out that China doesn't really have an incentive to dump a lot of its dollars because that would force China to take losses on its investment and also it would help US exports.

No comments:

Post a Comment