> As of the end of 1998, foreign financial claims on the U.S. were $5.4
> trillion, while U.S. claims on foreigners were $2.7 trillion, for a net
> balance of -$2.7 trillion. That's deteriorated by about $1 trillion since
> 1996. About half of that has gone into Treasury bonds, and a quarter into
> corporate bonds. This gusher of foreign money has kept the real and the
> financial circulations circulating wildly.
Whoa, I thought the Fed's Z1 flow-of-funds figures listed net claims at $1.9 trillion or so. Which line items do you add, I assume it's the L51 plus corporate bonds? Or are total financial claims different from the concept of net international investment position?
The reason I ask is that I always give a graph of the latter to my class (it's a Comparative Literature class, but what the hell, and wasn't it Wallace Stevens who said money is a kind of poetry?). They're generally mightily impressed by such statistics, which confirm exactly what they see around them -- a society in the throes of severe decay and unrelenting class polarization.
-- Dennis