Andre Soliani & Joshua Goodman, Bloomberg, 02/27/2013
As the currency war intensifies in the developed world, the Brazilian official who coined the phrase says for his country it’s softened.
Brazil succeeded in reducing swings in the real after letting the currency depreciate 19 percent in the two years ending in December to protect local manufacturers from foreign competition, Finance Minister Guido Mantega said in an interview. Now with the real hovering around 2 per dollar, Brazil is abandoning policies to depress the exchange rate even as Japan weakens the yen and the U.S. sticks to policies Mantega has said spurred the start of the currency war.
“We haven’t resolved it, but we neutralized, softened the currency war issue that other countries are facing,” Mantega, 63, said at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York. “We are in Brazil in a transition to a more solid, competitive and efficient economy.”
