The Australian dollar has fallen to USD0.825, down nearly 25% from its cycle high in mid-2011, and Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens wants it to go even lower.

In an interview earlier this week with The Australian Financial Review, Mr. Stevens said he now believes that the exchange rate should be in the vicinity of USD0.75, a level at which the currency hasn’t traded for a sustained period in roughly eight years (excluding the Global Financial Crisis).

That would represent a fall of nearly 10% from current levels, a dismal prospect in the near term for U.S. investors who are already suffering losses from the downturn in the resource space.

Of course, from the perspective of Australian policymakers, a lower exchange rate will be crucial in helping the country’s economy find growth in new areas now that investment in the mining sector is on the wane.

Indeed, one of the primary aims of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) current rate-cutting cycle has been to push the Australian dollar lower. However, the central bank didn’t have much success on that front until the middle of last year, when the U.S. Federal Reserve announced it was considering how to curtail its extraordinary stimulus.

That finally caused traders to reevaluate the relative fundamentals of each currency. While the prospect of higher rates in the U.S. suggested that growth was poised to accelerate, Australia’s economic trajectory and its accompanying monetary policy seemed headed in the opposite direction.

During the commodities boom, Australia’s resource riches helped fuel the perception that the country’s currency is backed by hard assets. The Australian dollar’s ascendance–it peaked at USD1.10 in mid-2011–helped attract foreign investors who enjoyed having their gains and income from dividends enhanced by currency appreciation.

More recently, however, the RBA repeatedly noted that the level of the exchange rate had become disconnected from economic fundamentals. In fact, it’s emphasized this point every month in Mr. Stevens’ statements on the bank’s monetary policy.

“But the Australian dollar remains above most estimates of its fundamental value, particularly given the significant declines in key commodity prices in recent months,” he observed in his most recent statement earlier this month.

The higher exchange rate has been disastrous for Australian companies attempting to compete overseas.

So in addition to keeping interest rates at historic lows with an eye toward dropping them even lower, the RBA is also hoping to engineer a sustained decline in the exchange rate.

To that end, Mr. Stevens and his deputies have engaged in periodic jawboning, or attempting to talk the currency down in their public statements, though such efforts have rarely achieved a lasting effect.

Based on past remarks, we had previously assumed the central bank was targeting an exchange rate somewhere between USD0.80 and USD0.85. After all, by his own admission in this week’s interview, when the aussie was trading near USD0.90 a year ago, Mr. Stevens had said at that time that it would be better for the country if the exchange rate fell to USD0.85.

So we were admittedly surprised by his latest remarks that USD0.75 would be preferable to current levels.

While a further drop of 10% in the exchange rate would be pretty significant in the world of currency trading, if the RBA lowers rates just as the Fed finally starts to raise rates again, then the exchange rate could very well be at that level by the third or fourth quarter of next year.

The majority of economists have yet to update their models since Mr. Stevens offered his latest take. For now, the consensus forecast among economists is for the aussie to fall to USD0.81 by the fourth quarter.

Although such depreciation is painful for our existing holdings, assuming the exchange rate does hit USD0.75 at some point in the next year or so, then it could present an incredible opportunity for investors with a medium- to long-term horizon.

Not only will that level allow U.S. investors to buy Australian assets at extremely favorable prices, there will also be a window of time during which the growth stimulated by a lower exchange rate won’t yet be reflected in share prices.

And, of course, commodity prices may still be depressed, meaning investors will still have a chance to buy some of our favorite resource plays on the cheap.

As such, investors with new money to invest could position their portfolios quite advantageously for the next commodity supercycle.