International tensions between countries representing the world’s largest currencies remained high on Thursday after an inconclusive seminar of G20 heads of government and finance ministers in China.
World leaders, finance ministers and academics had gathered at a “high-level seminar” in Nanjing to discuss reform of the international monetary system, central to France’s chairmanship of the G20 in 2011. But the divisions that have prevented a co-operative solution to global trade imbalances remained evident.
Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, identified the problem in the international monetary system to be the asymmetry between freely floating currencies and the “tightly managed exchange rate regimes and very extensive capital controls” of “some emerging markets” – a clear reference to China.