Matthew C Klein, Columnist

Currency Wars, Gangnam-Style

How will South Korea react to currency devaluation in Japan?

April 16, 2013 at 10:33 PM UTC

Matthew C. Klein writes for Bloomberg View about the economy and financial markets. He previously wrote for the Economist magazine and its economics blog, Free Exchange. Before that, Klein was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he spent more than two years studying the history of the Federal Reserve and the intellectual history of monetary economics for an upcoming book by Sebastian Mallaby. He also worked at Bridgewater Associates, where he studied the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and advised institutional investors on asset-liability management. Klein has a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University. Originally from Chicago, he lives in New York.

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

(Corrects amount of South Korean exports in description of second chart.)

The U.S. Treasury on Friday issued a warning to Japanese policymakers "to refrain from competitive devaluation and targeting its exchange rate for competitive purposes." The warning was prompted by the Bank of Japan's commitment to a new inflation target and a much larger balance sheet. My colleague Caroline Baum has already noted the strangeness of the U.S. statement, given that the Japanese government is merely doing what U.S. academics have been recommending for more than 15 years.