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Essay on Current Account Deficits

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Carbaugh (2011) asks, "Can the United States Continue to Run Current Account Deficits Indefinitely?" (p. 361). Ultimately in the long term the answer is no, but the question could be rephrased to ask: (1) Does the United States' unique position in the world economy allow the country to safely run persistent external deficits? and (2) can persistent U.S. deficits in the current and payments accounts be adjusted without bringing about economic recession or crisis? Japan, China, and Middle Eastern oil countries have enabled this deficit to continue by heavily investing in U.S. Treasury securities (Carbaugh, 2011). Because foreigners desire to purchase American assets, Carbaugh (2011) concludes that “there is no economic reason why [the …show more content…

dollar. (p. 5)
Deutsche Bank (Karczmar, 2004) suggests that the euro could eventually challenge the dollar as a reserve currency, but the euro is still far behind the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency, representing just 24.2 percent of the world banking reserves in the 2013 third quarter (International Monetary Fund, 2013). Numerous economists endorse the United States’ ability to safely continue its external deficits. Cooper (2001) poses the argument in its simplest form:
It is often suggested that the large current account deficit poses a serious financing problem for the United States. Each year, the lament goes, the United States must attract net inflows of capital sufficient to "cover" the huge current shortfall. But this proposition gets the logic backward: the U.S. deficit is "financed" by net capital inflows only in an ex post accounting sense. In economic terms it is more nearly correct to say that net capital inflows cause the current account deficit. (p. 218)
Likewise, Edwards (2005) suggests that “since the U.S. current account deficit poses no threat, there are no fundamental reasons to justify a significant fall in the value of the dollar” (p. 212). Bertaut, Kamin, and Thomas (2009) observe that “with the real multilateral

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