434 Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos Núm. 2 / 2013 many other economies at risk, which is why they are known as global imbalances. In reality, the danger is not so much the imbalance, as what would happen if it had to be corrected quickly, without giving economies time to adapt and therefore having a disruptive effect. Even before the outbreak of the crisis of 2008, the global imbalance that was of most concern was the U.S. trade deficit. It is a concern because it is a situation in which there is a “large” deficit (or a “large” debtor), which is the USA, and a group of countries with a “large” trade surplus (and, therefore, several “small and medium-sized” creditors). Such countries include the major producers of oil and/or gas (Saudi Arabia, the Middle East oil countries and Russia) and other countries which have gained increasing importance in the world economy and whose trade balances record surpluses year after year (mainly China, but also Japan). If we were to imagine that there was only one world trade balance, the counterparty to all the aforementioned surpluses would be the enormous deficit of the United States. In both cases, the figures have been increasing over the past two decades, but the crisis has reduced the magnitudes and changed some of the trends. To maintain the balance of payments, large capital flows are required, and these must remain stable over time. If there are sudden stops in the flows, the problems of the world economy would be exacerbated and could be comparable to what is happening on a smaller scale in the countries of southern Europe. The asymmetric imbalance between the financial accounts of the creditor countries (basically, the oil producing countries and China and Japan) and the debtor country had increased considerably in the years preceding the crisis and has remained stable since the crisis, thus calling for a huge mobilisation of financial instruments of every description. Another reason why financial imbalances are now more dangerous than in previous years is because gross financial flows have increased several times more than net flows. Added to this, the forms of financing trade deficits are becoming increasingly more complex and sophisticated, the number of economic players involved in markets is rising, and both primary and secondary derivative and other types of markets are being used, many of which are very opaque and, hence, very difficult to control. Therefore, bearing in mind that all of these are interconnected, any problem affecting funding markets at the global level will greatly affect the sustainability of global imbalances. In order to assess the magnitude of the problem in the case of the United States and China, let us take a look at two graphs we have prepared based on the data we presented at the start of this section. The first shows the Current Account Balance as a percentage of GDP between 1995 and 2007. We have taken the Current Account Balance, which is the Balance of Trade plus other transactions such as services, transfers and income, because it is more general and does not alter the data significantly. The second graph shows the data for the years 2008 to 2012 and a forecast up to 2017. We split the two periods in 2007 because, as we will see later on, the crisis of 2008 should,
REVISTA IEEE 2
To see the actual publication please follow the link above