Mario Draghi dismisses talk of currency war

European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi sought to take the heat out of a debate about currency wars on Monday but said the ECB would still have to assess the economic impact of the euro’s strength. The euro hit a 15-month high against the dollar earlier this month, complicating the ECB’s policy-making tasks by weighing on growth and feeding expectations that it may have to take fresh policy action, which some ECB members oppose. While he expected a very gradual recovery in the euro zone later this year, Draghi said the euro’s exchange rate was important for growth and inflation and that it could threaten to pull down inflation too far. “We will have to assess in the coming projections whether the exchange rate has had an impact on our inflationary profile, because it’s always through price stability that we address issues like that,” he told European lawmakers in Brussels. The Group of 20 nations, responding to feverish debate last week about competitive devaluations between the world’s economic powers, said on Saturday there would be no currency war – essentially countries competing to weaken their currencies. Japan’s expansive policies, which have driven down the yen,...