Bernanke rejects competitive devaluation worries

US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Monday rejected worries that the world's leading economies were competitively cutting their currency values. Bernanke told an audience at the London School of Economics that, although the exchange rates of some major economies have fallen, the policies are aimed at boosting growth and "confer net benefits on the world economy as a whole." Moreover, he said, because the main economies are all pumping up their money supplies -- effectively pushing down the value of their currencies -- the net change between their currencies is not vary significant. Do the strongly stimulative economic policies of countries like the United States, Britain and elsewhere "constitute competitive devaluations?", Bernanke asked rhetorically. "To the contrary, because monetary policy is accommodative in the great majority of advanced industrial economies, one would not expect large and persistent changes in the configuration of exchange rates among these countries."