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November 10, 2010

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US easy money policies slammed

CHINA kept up a drumbeat of criticism of United States easy money policies yesterday, warning two days before a G20 world economic summit that Washington could destabilise the global economy and inflate asset bubbles.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissed US calls for numerical limits for current account balances but said she hoped to avoid a confrontation at the Seoul summit between China and the US over trade and currencies.

"I don't think much of quantified balance of payments targets," Merkel told yesterday's Financial Times, warning that monetary tensions could fuel protectionism.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has already backed away from the proposal to set targets for current accounts gaps, and Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said it was not likely that the G20 would agree on any hard numbers.

"It's more likely that countries will agree a common approach, and finance ministers from the member countries will debate the details later," he said in Tokyo.

The US Federal Reserve's new US$600 billion bond-buying programme has drawn global scorn because of concerns it will send a flood of cash into the world economy without doing much to reinvigorate a lackluster US recovery.

Ma Delun, vice governor of the People's Bank of China, said he was concerned the Fed's spending spree may undermine efforts to balance out global growth.

The Fed's program "may add risks to the global economic imbalance, put pressure on emerging markets to adjust their international balance of payments and could also stir the formation of asset bubbles, all of which require our vigilance," Ma said in Beijing.

Leaders of the Group of 20 meet tomorrow and Friday.




 

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