The US, EU and Japan are going to have relatively small reserves because they are pursuing a dirty float rather than a policy of trying to steeply discount their currencies against trading partners.

IOW, you get large currency reserves as a side-effect of pursuing the neo-mercantalist policy of discounting the cost of your domestic resources in overseas markets by depressing your currency exchange rate.

The US, EU and Japan can't do that, because their's are the currencies that the neo-mercantalists are targeting. Its not possible for everyone to depress the value of their Foreign Exchange Rate against everyone else, because the FXR of currency B against current A is the inverse of the FXR of currency A against currency B.

A more useful 2-way breakdown would be net energy imports as a percentage of total current account inflows excluding energy exports, and current account outflows excluding energy imports as a percentage of total current account inflows excluding energy exports.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.