Why Is the Euro Still Gaining Against the Dollar?

The primary purposes of the incorrectly named ‘unconventional monetary policies’ are to debase the currency, stoke inflation, and make exports more competitive. Printing money aims to solve structural imbalances by making currencies weaker.
In this race to zero in global currency wars, central banks today are ‘printing’ more than $200 billion per month despite that the financial crisis passed a long time ago.
Currency wars are those that no one admits to waging, but everyone wants to fight in secret. The goal is to promote exports at the expense of trading partners.
Reality shows currency wars do not work, as imports become more expensive and other open economies become more competitive through technology. But central banks still like weak currencies -they help to avoid hard reform choices and create a transfer of wealth from savers to debtors.
The Euro Rallies So how must the bureaucrats at the European Central Bank (ECB) feel when they see the euro rise against the U. S. dollar and all its main trading currencies by more than 12 percent in a year, despite all the talk about more easing? The ECB will keep buying 60 billion euro a month in bonds, maintain its zero interest-rate policy, and keep this ‘stimulus’ as long as it takes, until inflation growth and GDP growth are stable.

This post was published at Ludwig von Mises Institute on Sept 12, 2017.