The debate on “global imbalances” has gone back to the future. The proposal from Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, to target the current account takes us back to the preoccupations of John Maynard Keynes at the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944. Keynes, representing Britain, was obsessed with the dangers of asymmetric adjustment between surplus and deficit countries. The US, then the world’s dominant surplus country, rebuffed calls for a mechanism that would impose pressure on both sides. Now the US is in the other camp.
有關“全球不平衡”的辯論已經“回到未來”。美國財長蒂姆?蓋特納(Tim Geithner)提議為經常賬戶余額設定指標，這讓我們回想起約翰?梅納德?凱恩斯(John Maynard Keynes)在1944年7月的布雷頓森林會議上極力關注的事情。代表英國出席會議的凱恩斯執著的辯稱，盈余國家和赤字國家之間的不對稱調整存在種種危險。美國這個當時全球最主要的盈余國家，斷然拒絕了要求建立一種對盈余國家和赤字國家雙方施加壓力的機制的呼吁。今天，美國站在相反的立場。