Last month, Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega revived his “currency war” claim. Two years earlier, he had begun talking about such a war between developed economies, primarily the United States, and emerging markets. At the time, the Federal Reserve was poised to undertake its second round of quantitative easing, provoking significant swings in financial markets. Mantega argued that OECD policymakers were attempting to devalue their currencies by keeping interest rates (both short- and long-term) artificially low, pushing capital outward into the emerging world and bidding up emerging market exchange rates. He brought up this charge again during September 2012 in the wake of the Fed’s “QE3” announcement, fearing an upward surge in emerging market currencies.