WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The following are highlights from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's testimony on currency issues at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Thursday. Geithner testified earlier on Thursday to the Senate Banking Committee on foreign exchange policy.
HOUSE WAYS AND MEAN CHAIRMAN LEVIN ON OUTLOOK FOR BILL
"I'll be working over the weekend, talking with colleagues and talking with leadership and decide by next week what is the appropriate next step."
"What I'm saying is I'll spending the weekend working on this and then decisions will be. There have been no decisions.
"We will be working on that over the weekend and into early next week."
GEITHNER ON RYAN-MURPHY BILL'S RELIANCE ON IMF TO JUDGE CURRENCY'S VALUE:
"We see the merits and the concerns about it. The merits are that we take an independent assessment so that we're not judge and jury. The problems with it are this is important to us. (I think delegating this responsibility) to anyone else is putting our interests at stake. The first set of complications to that ... is that there is no science to the determination of the degree of undervaluation or overvaluation of exchange rates. People will always disagree ... that's why even today, those in China who believe the currency should be stronger can't be sure how far they think it would make sense to let it go. So this is a difficult complicated question."
GEITHNER ON TIMELINE FOR ASSESSING YUAN'S RISE
"This process of adjustment in their exchange rate is going to have to happen over time and it's not going to happen in a week or three months and we're not going to really know in a week or three months or six months or 12 months or 18 months whether we're going to see enough. This is something that we're going to have to be pursuing over a sustained period of time.
"The combination of the semiannual exchange rate report and the meetings of the G20 that happen at the ministers' level three or four times a year, at the heads of state level one or more times a year provide other benchmarks, timetables, things we can help use to advance progress. We are using every approach we can find, using the IMF to reinforce the basic case that this is a global problem ... to make sure that China understands that this is something that the world economy has a great stake in."
GEITHNER ON WHITE HOUSE ENDORSEMENT OF RYAN-MURPHY CURRENCY BILL:
"No, the White House has not, the administration has not yet, but we are carefully looking at it."
GEITHNER ON CHINA NEEDING TO HEAR CONGRESSIONAL CONCERNS
"I think it is very important that China hear from the Congress, from Republicans and from Democrats, about how strong the concerns are about the impact on U.S. economic interests (from) many of the practices that we've been discussing today. It's important for them to understand that this is an important issue for the American people and we're serious about it."
