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EDITORIAL
Preventing a Currency War
New York Times: February 13, 2013

The Group of 7 industrialized countries appeared to tamp down talk of a currency war in a statement this week that said markets should determine exchange rates and that countries should use fiscal and monetary policies to achieve faster growth. It may help curb fears that stagnant economies will devalue their currencies to make their exports more affordable relative to competitors.

The statement came in response to sharp moves in currencies like the euro and the yen and calls by some Group of 7 countries like France for policies that could lead to competitive devaluations.

The yen, for instance, has fallen by about 11 percent against the dollar since the recent election in Japan of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has pushed for economic stimulus and more aggressive asset purchases by the Bank of Japan to fight deflation. Critics say those policies are aimed at lowering the value of the yen, which Mr. Abe’s government has denied.

And last week President François Hollande of France proposed that euro-zone nations should adopt a policy to manage the value of the common currency to maintain the competitiveness of European goods. (The euro has appreciated about 2 percent against the dollar and nearly 10 percent against the yen this year.)

Such misguided thinking can lead only to chaos and retaliation. If all countries were to competitively devalue their currencies, the result would be a downward spiral that would benefit no one, but could lead to high inflation. Certainly in Europe, altering exchange rates is not the answer; reviving economies will require giving up on austerity, which is choking demand and investment.

Developing countries like Brazil and Mexico also complain that looser monetary policy in industrialized nations can produce effects similar to currency manipulation. When central banks in countries like Japan and the United States pump more money into their financial systems, investors are driven to put their money into emerging markets where interest rates are higher. That pushes up currencies like the real and peso, making exports from those countries more expensive on the world market. Instead of responding to this effect by manipulating their exchange rates, those countries could protect themselves from volatile capital flows by regulating them.

With much of Europe in a recession, Japan struggling with deflation, and the weak American economy potentially falling back into a recession if the automatic spending cuts go through, the global economy is fragile. The last thing the world needs is a currency war.