Although the US foreign liabilities exceed the assets by over USD 2.5 trillion, the current account income balance of the US in 2005 was positive. This has led  1  As presented by A. Blinder and R. Reis in „Understanding the Greenspan Standard”, presented at the Fed conference in Kansas City in August 2005. (Economic Performance in the Greenspan Era: The Evolution of Events and Ideas). An example of such delays in the possibility of recognising a certain phenomenon is the rapid acceleration of the growth trend in labour productivity in the USA in mid-90s. The former Federal Reserve President Alan Greenspan formulated a thesis that such an acceleration took place in 1995, whereas econometric models where capable to show it only after five years from its occurrence. BIS Review 19/2006  1  to creation of a new hypothesis, according to which the USA exports “dark matter” 2 . It claims that, since the US revenues on foreign assets are higher than the costs of servicing of foreign liabilities, some “other assets” must exist which, being measured incorrectly in the statistics, affect the “real” international investment position of the USA, which is not negative. In such a case, the US current account deficits observed in the recent years would be a statistical illusion. The aforementioned concept has stirred a very lively debate and has been forcefully criticised by many economists, including Willem Buiter 3 , a former EBRD chief economist.
Public and private partners are involved in this undertaking — they formed a consortium composed of the Rzeszow University of Technology, other technical universities, a group of aviation industry enterprises called “The Aviation Valley” and the Polish Aviation Institute”. Globalisation influences the perspectives of the world’s major economies. In the USA, the discussion on relocation of jobs to the Asian countries became a lively element of political debate during the last presidential elections. Similarly, in Europe a debate is underway concerning the future of the single services market. There is no doubt, however, that any solutions of regulatory or protectionist nature may hinder all these changes only temporarily, as they are inevitable. The countries, whose politicians will understand the mechanisms of the global economy and will implement necessary reforms to improve the investment climate, will benefit the most from the globalisation processes. Entrepreneurs should also keep a sharp lookout on the globalisation processes currently underway, in order to respond to the emerging threats in a timely manner, but - first of all - in order to benefit from the great opportunities that they create. Thank you very much for your attention. 8  BIS Review 19/2006