>When the capital inflow is bigger than the current account gap, won't
>that just push up the value of the dollar (or whatever currency)? And
>isn't the reverse true, too? My point is that the two numbers don't
>always have to match -- but when they don't it always shows up in the
>exchange rate. Right?
In theory they're supposed to match. In practice they don't. The difference (just as with the production and income sides of the national income & product accounts) is called the statistical discrepancy. Most of the time it's tiny; lately, both discrepancies have been huge.
Doug