“Do-nothing” US fiscal policy is stoking international tension over exchange rates by forcing the Federal Reserve to run super-loose monetary policy, according to Guido Mantega, Brazil’s finance minister.
Mr Mantega, a critic of the Fed’s quantitative easing (QE) monetary policy who popularised the term “currency war” last year, said the US central bank was trying to boost demand – a job that fiscal policy should be doing.
“If we had expansionist monetary policy combined with more stimulative fiscal policy in place, we wouldn’t face this problem with the US economy,” he said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings in Washington.