America, the Balanced

It may be time to stop worrying about the US current-account deficit – and not only because of adjustment at home and in China. It is possible that, properly measured, America's true deficits were smaller than has been reported, and even that, in some years, they were not there at all.

CAMBRIDGE – When the United States’ current account fell into deficit in 1982, the US Council of Economic Advisers accurately predicted record deficits for years to come, owing to budget deficits, a low national saving rate, and an overvalued dollar. If the US did not adjust, knowledgeable forecasters intoned, it would go from being the world’s largest creditor to its largest debtor. Many of us worried that the imbalances were unsustainable, and might end in a “hard landing” for the dollar if and when global investors tired of holding it.

The indebtedness forecasts were correct. Indeed, every year for more than three decades, the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has reported a current-account deficit. And yet now we must ask whether the US current-account deficit is still a problem.

For starters, the world’s investors declared loud and clear in 2008 that they were not concerned about the sustainability of US deficits. When the global financial crisis erupted, they flooded into dollar assets, even though the crisis originated in the United States.

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