Current Account Balances

This is an interesting list from the CIA world fact book:A Rank Order of Current Account Balances...

http://tinyurl.com/eseet

[from chucks_angels]

[9/14/06] [Bill Bonner writes] Fallen into our hands is a report from the CIA, ranking nations in order of their current account balance. The current account, we remind readers, is like the operating statement of a business or an individual. Income must exceed outflow or your upkeep is your downfall. The difference between what comes in and what goes out, if it is positive, accumulates as though it were a profit. If it is negative, it builds up - but not necessarily, in the form of debt.

Last in line are the nations of the Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking debt-based empire! New Zealand has a deficit of nearly $10 billion. Then, South Africa...and India...and Australia all have deficits too. Among the major former colonies of the British Empire, only Canada seems to have any sense. It runs a surplus. The others are all debtors. The UK itself is third from the bottom with a $57 billion negative current account balance.

For no reason we can think of, the penultimate on the list is Spain. And then comes the worst of all...the United States of America, with a current account balance of a minus $829 billion.

Add up all the deficits of the entire world and you get a figure barely half of the U.S. total.

The U.S. economy makes up a quarter of the world total...that it should have more than half of the world's current account deficits is a spectacular success - only made possible by its great wealth and status.

[I guess that's one way of looking at it.]