主题：【经济胡说】大变局 -- 西风陶陶

Strong-dollar policy has had its day

By Stephen Bartholomeusz

“There was a time when policy mattered. In the 1980s and early 1990s, central banks could co-ordinate their currency trading to influence relativities. In those days central bank reserves were the dominant repositories of global financial assets.

Today they're not. Twenty years ago, the combined central bank foreign exchange reserves in the US, UK, Japan, Germany and Switzerland amounted to about $US139 billion against daily foreign exchange turnover of $US39 billion, according to McKinsey research.

By the early '90s, foreign exchange turnover was more than twice the level of reserves and today central banks' reserves of $US375 billion ($576 billion) are dwarfed by daily foreign exchange turnover of more than $US1.2 trillion. Market power has shifted from central banks to the private sector.

The policymakers can smooth daily fluctuations in currency relativities but don't have the ammunition for longer battles.”