February 04, 2011
That might have been an appropriate headline for an article reporting on a press conference by Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke in which he reportedly said that employers are hiring temporary workers because they are uncertain about the future strength of the economy. In fact, in spite of recent hiring temporary employment is still down almost 15 percent from its pre-recession level.
The article also includes the comment that “critics” of Bernanke’s policy of quantitative easing say that it “devalues the dollar.” This is what supporters of the policy would say too. The United States has a large trade deficit. In an economy with floating exchange rates the way in which a deficit is reversed is through a decline in the value of the currency. That is why people to see this imbalance corrected, and see the United States borrow less from abroad, want to see the value of the dollar fall.
The implication of the view attributed to “critics” is that they want to see the United States continue to run large trade deficits and to borrow large amounts of money from abroad.
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