Obama: Healthy economy ensures strong dollar
This photo provided by the White House shows President Barack Obama meeting with his national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Thursday, May 6, 2010, in the Situation Room of the White House in Washington. Credit: AP Photo/Pete Souza
President Barack Obama said a healthy U.S. economy will ensure a "strong dollar," reiterating his administration's policy that market forces should determine the value of currencies.
"We have a market-based mechanism for determining the value of currencies," Obama told a Russian TV interviewer asking about the dollar amid concerns about Greece's credit restructuring. "I think that if we have a strong U.S. economy we're going to have a strong dollar.
"My basic principle is to focus on the fundamentals of the economy," he said, according to an interview transcript released by the White House yesterday.Obama said he is "very concerned about what's happening in Europe, but I think it is an issue that the Europeans recognize is very serious."
"Greece is taking some very difficult measures - at least they've put forward a plan that calls for difficult measures," he said. "And if we can stabilize Europe that will be good for the United States and that will be good for Russia as well."
