Dollar devalued by John Key | The Jackal

19 Apr 2012

Dollar devalued by John Key

On Monday, Dow Jones reported:

Key was speaking at the headquarters of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on the second day of a four-day visit to Indonesia. He flies to Singapore on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, the prime minister met with Chairul Tanjung, chair of the National Economic Committee, where he called the New Zealand currency overvalued.

"We still want the markets to normalize. We've been overvalued for a few days, but we're considering what we can do to resist a rising exchange rate," he said, adding that the Kiwi's strength was the result of weaknesses in the U.S. and European economies.

The New Zealand dollar sunk 0.3% against the U.S. unit after Key's comments to an intraday low of US$0.8172.

Today, TVNZ reports:

The New Zealand dollar fell to 81.45 US cents at 8am from 82.16 cents yesterday at 5pm. The trade weighted index decreased to 72.72 from 73.27 yesterday.

[...]

The New Zealand dollar fell to 78.73 Australian cents at 8am from 79.02 cents yesterday. It declined to 50.87 British pence from 51.58 pence and dropped to 66.20 yen from 66.86 yen.

A low dollar isn't such a good idea when your importing more goods than you export. It simply transfers the wealth from people having to pay more for imported goods to the exporters.

The farmers like it of course, so National think it's great! But it does little to help ordinary New Zealander's and makes working in other countries all the more enticing.