Summers Says Currency Interventions Fail Even at Japan’s Scale

Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that currency interventions are ineffective at shifting exchange rates, even at the large magnitude that Japan has been thought to have deployed recently.

“Given the massive size of the capital markets, I think the evidence is reasonably clear intervention doesn’t work — even in the scales that the Japanese engaged,” Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin. “It’s just overwhelmed by the broad magnitude of private sector capital flows.”