question for the list

Seth Ackerman sia at nyc.rr.com
Tue May 21 14:59:59 PDT 2002


People always say that foreigners keep funding our current account deficit because the returns on investments in the US are so much higher than in the rest of the world.

But why, then, are America's debt service payments on its external liabilities so small compared to the size of the liabilities? Here's what Fred Bergsten says:

"These payouts are surprisingly small so far, amounting to only about $14 billion in 2001, because foreign investment by Americans yields a substantially higher return than foreigners' investments here."

So if returns on investments in the US are actually much *lower* than investments abroad, why does the US keep sucking up so much of the world's capital?

Could a major reason be that countries are being semi-coerced into putting a lot of their savings into low-yielding short-term US debt and bank deposits in order to build up forex reserves that protect them from exchange rate swings?

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