Whenever possible, policymakers should explore a broad set of options before responding to challenges they face. However, when the President and his advisers recently discussed foreign currency intervention, we hope everyone quickly concluded that it would be a profoundly bad idea.
Before we get started, it is important to explain what foreign currency intervention is and how it is done….
Read MoreIn September 2010, Brazil’s former finance minister, Guido Mantega, made headlines when he accused the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England of engaging in a currency war. The complaint was that easy monetary policy was driving down the value of the dollar, the euro and the pound, at the expense of his country and those like it. More recently, similar charges have been levied against Japan: namely, that the Bank of Japan’s extraordinary balance sheet expansion is aimed at driving down the value of the yen, damaging the country’s trading partners and competitors...
Read MoreChina is the world’s largest trader and (on a purchasing power parity basis) is about to surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy. China already accounts for about 10% of global trade in goods and services, and over 15% of global economic activity.
So, as China takes its place as the biggest economy on the globe, will its currency, the renminbi (RMB), become the most widely used international currency as well? Will the RMB supplant the U.S. dollar as the leading reserve currency held by central bankers and others, or as the safe-haven currency in financial crises?
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