Instead, the yen's strength is a by-product of private sector recycling of the current account surplus and international purchases of Japanese assets.
America can take some comfort from a narrowing of China's current-account surplus, from 11% of GDP at its peak in 2007 to 6.1% last year.
The UK ran a current account surplus of 0.6 percent of GDP in 1978, the last full year before Thatcher came to office.
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And unlike America, Germany is a supplier of global credit: its current-account surplus was a hefty 7.7% of GDP last year, according to the OECD.
It has an inflation rate of less than 1% and a current-account surplus that has reached 15% of GDP.
An IMF study in 2009, by Marco Terrones and Thomas Helbling, concluded that the biggest cause of the switch from a global current-account deficit to a surplus was mismeasurement of services.
Another way of looking at China's current-account surplus with America is that in exchange for selling lots of cheap shoes and fridges to American consumers, China receives little by way of return except IOUs in the form of American Treasuries.
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Nor is there much worry about a potential nasty side-effect of a booming current-account surplus: rising inflation.
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German officials reject the most obvious ways of shrinking the current-account surplus.
Rather than forcing Germans, whose savings rates and current account surplus results from years of fiscal prudence, to lend even more money and suffer higher inflation so that the southern tier can receive more monetary stimulus, Dombret argues the citizens of deficit economies must spend less while working, producing and saving more.
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In a little-noticed comment during the weekend's meetings, Yi Gang, a deputy governor of China's central bank and head of the country's foreign-exchange reserves, said that China aimed to bring its current-account surplus below 4% of GDP within 3-5 years.
Its current-account surplus has narrowed largely because of an increase in domestic investment, not consumption.
According to Goldstein, China's total current account surplus has ballooned from 1% of its gross domestic product in 2001 to 9% in 2006.
Second Minister for Finance Mustapa Mohamed says the country is benefiting from a high rate of savings (42% of GNP), a current-account surplus and decelerating inflation.
The country's roaring exports contributed to a growing current-account surplus, which exceeded 10% of its GDP in 2007 (see chart 3).
Germany's current account surplus last year was nearly 6% of GDP.
Paul Cavey at Macquarie has pencilled in a rate of 5.8 yuan to the dollar for 2013, for example, when he expects the current-account surplus to be 3.6% of GDP.
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All of which should help increase the trade surplus and further reduce the current-account deficit.
Its current-account surplus has almost halved to around 6% of GDP from 11% in 2007.
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Russia is in the lucky position of having relatively low debts and a big current-account surplus.
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Reserves fell in China during the last quarter of 2011 partly owing to the narrowing in its current account surplus.
The Economist Intelligence Unit, a sister company to The Economist, expects China to move to a current-account deficit in 2001, after years of surplus.
First, Switzerland's current-account surplus is forecast to be 8.7% of GDP this year.
One big difference is that in the 1960s the United States ran a current-account surplus and was a net creditor to the rest of the world.
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Whereas Ireland's current account was just in surplus last year, Portugal ran a deficit of 6.4% of GDP.
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Fiscal and monetary stimulus, which jolted domestic demand, has caused China's current-account surplus to narrow dramatically, from 10.1% of GDP in 2007 to a projected 2.9% this year, according to Nomura, a financial services group, which sees it almost disappearing by 2013.
China's current-account surplus has fallen from 11% to an estimated 6% of GDP.
With stimulative fiscal and monetary policy bolstering domestic demand, China's current-account surplus has shrunk by two-thirds, from 10% of GDP in 2007.
The lagged effect of higher oil prices and yen strength will further reduce the Japanese current-account surplus and ultimately trigger a violent dollar rally against the yen.
According to Martin Neil Baily, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, the "striking thing" about last year's report was that it painted a rosy view of the trade imbalance by focusing on the capital account surplus, rather than its inverse, the current account deficit.
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