1st LD Writethru: ECB president rejects Washington's accusation of currency manipulating

European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi on Monday rejected Washington's accusation of currency manipulating.

"We are not currency manipulators," said Draghi at the European Parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee.

The remarks came after Peter Navarro, head of the U.S. National Trade Council, reportedly said the euro was like an "implicit Deutsche Mark" whose low valuation gave Germany an advantage over its main partners.

Navarro, as well, said Germany used a "grossly undervalued" euro to exploit the United States and its European Union (EU) partners.

The ECB president said the EU's monetary policies reflected the diverse state of the economic cycle of the eurozone and the United States.

"The single market would not survive with continuous competitive devaluations," the president told parliamentarians.

Draghi also slammed U.S. President Donald Trump's policy of loosening bank regulations which were introduced after the 2008 financial crisis, saying Washington's idea was "very worrisome."

He said financial regulations and legislative actions taken in the aftermath of the financial crisis helped curb the development of significant financial stability risk.

"The last thing we need at this point is a relaxation of regulation," Draghi said.

Trump last week signed an executive order to overhaul the country's financial regulatory system, including scaling back the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that was introduced after the financial crisis and imposed strict capital standards on banks. Endit