When, last week, the Treasury issued its currency manipulation report, I thought it was a joke. The Treasury put Germany and Italy on its "monitoring list" of countries suspected of "currency manipulation."
Germany and Italy are, of course, part of the Euro, the whole point of which is that they cannot, individually, "manipulate" their currencies, whatever that means. It is precisely this inability to devalue - to "manipulate" the Drachma to regain "competitiveness" (another meaningless term) - that conventional wisdom bemoaned of Greece.
I had a little chuckle, envisioning some frustrated mid-level Treasury economist