Assessing global imbalances  Current account balances provide us with helpful information on the state of the economy. At the same time, the current crisis as well as other past experience show the potential risks of simply using current account balances as an indicator of unsustainable global imbalances.
Although not an exhaustive list, I would like to highlight three points as lessons from current and past experiences. First, surpluses and deficits emerge as a result of the voluntary choices of economic entities and thus should not be automatically deemed as problematic.