Geithner vows to defend strong US dollar policy

Editor’s Note: Today in opposite world….

NEW YORK (AFP) – US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner vowed Tuesday that the United States would never follow a strategy to weaken the US dollar.

“Our policy has been and will always be, as long as I will be in office, that a strong dollar is in the interest of the country,” Geithner said at a New York conference organized by the Council of Foreign Relations.

“We will never embrace a strategy to weaken the dollar.”

It was the first time this year that Geithner had publicly proclaimed a US strong-dollar policy, a mantra of treasury secretaries for more than a decade.

In the year to date, the dollar has lost 6.5 percent of its value compared with a basket of currencies held by its major trade partners.