| Sumario: | The whole world is now running at a massive current account deficit, according to official statistics. Individual countries' current-account deficits and surpluses should, in theory, cancel each other out, but they never do because of statistical errors and omissions. According to figures from J.P. Morgan, the world is expected to run an overall current account deficit in 2000 of $245 billion, equivalent to 3 percent of world exports of goods and services, and that gap is widening. An economist at J.P. Morgan, Philip Suttle, suggests three possible causes for the deficit: freer trade; the surge in sales over the Internet; and greater uncertainty about exchange rates since the 1997 Asian crisis.
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