G20 leaders back currency depreciation to boost growth
ISTANBUL—The world’s top finance leaders on Tuesday in effect backed currency depreciation as a tool for promoting growth by signaling strong support for aggressive easy-money policies aimed at boosting the fragile global economy.
The support by finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 largest economies for mass monetary easing—policies that have weakened exchange rates from Europe to Japan—is at odds with the traditional view that currency depreciation could have damaging effects on other economies.
It also reflects worry that economies in much of the world could get stuck in a low-growth rut without decisive cash injections from central banks. It marks an implicit acknowledgment of the failure across the globe to enact longer-lasting structural overhauls to major economies after years of relying on short-term spending and other temporary stimulus programs.
