Pity the South Koreans. They had wanted next month’s G20 summit in Seoul to create a new financial safety net for troubled governments, seal agreement on banking capital accords and reorientate poor countries’ development policy towards the investment-led growth that Korea itself so spectacularly achieved.
But instead of a new Bretton Woods they seem likely to preside over a rumble in Seoul’s concrete jungle as the global currency fist fight rolls into town.
This weekend’s instalment at the annual International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington saw China, long pummelled by the US for worsening global current account imbalances by manipulating its exchange rate, come off the ropes swinging. Zhou Xiaochuan, central bank governor, and ironically the strongest advocate within China’s governing agencies of faster renminbi appreciation, charged that expectations the US Federal Reserve would pump yet more dollars into the markets through quantitative easing was worsening imbalances and swamping emerging economies with destabilising capital inflows.