According to the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank supported by organized labor, the answer to generating up to 6 million more jobs is as simple as ending global currency manipulation. But not in the sense of ramping USDJPY or AUDUSD at key market inflection points which mostly benefits such FX-rigging chatrooms as “the Cartel”, no: they are thinking more big picture, in the “central bank manipulation sense.”
The report says that “several foreign countries devalue their currencies to make their products cheaper, making it difficult for U.S. manufacturers to compete, the report said.” In essence what the group suggests is that the US currency is overvalued relative to the rest of the world, and that by “realigning exchange rates, U.S. trade deficits would be reduced by up to $500 billion per year by 2015. Such a move would increase U.S. gross domestic product by up to $720 billion per year and create up to 5.8 million jobs, the report said.” Said otherwise: stop foreigncurrency manipulation, but allow and encourage the US to keep pushing its own currency even lower.
This is all wonderful, however it appears the unions or their mouthpiece thinktank have never heard of the Fed, whose job over the past 5 years has been, among other things, to keep the dollar weaker than it would normally be. If anything, the rest of the world is merely mimicking the policies of the Fed, which have been adopted first by the Bank of England, next the Bank of Japan, and soon, maybe, the European Central Bank. We can’t wait to see how much screaming and yelling will ensue if and when Mario Draghi does indeed engage in unsterilized QE, and sends the Euro plunging (now that there is supposedly no fear of redenomination) and by implication, the USD soaring making exports of US goods and services to Europe even more prohibitive. And don’t tell labor unions about the recent collapse in the Chinese Yuan: that would really put their noses out of joint.
