Russia's Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin took the US Federal Reserve to task on Tuesday for its ongoing stimulus programme, which he said was hurting emerging markets. "The continuation of the quantitative easing programme, which is designed to support the US economy, creates an excess of liquidity and inflows of speculative funds into emerging markets," the veteran minister told an academic conference in Moscow.
He also urged the creation of a global regulatory framework to counter economic imbalances, which should in general "be reduced and prevented so that later we don't experience shocks". Some US central bank officials have argued the time is coming for the Fed to begin tightening monetary policy.
But chairman Ben Bernanke on Monday dampened speculation the Fed might soon call a halt to QE, saying higher US inflation was driven primarily by rising commodity prices globally and was unlikely to persist. Kudrin's comments, which came after he met Christine Lagarde, economy minister of Group of 20 chair France, supported expectations that measuring and controlling global imbalances will top the agenda at the G20, International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings next week in Washington.
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