Publication

The global financial system seems to have a black hole at its centre. Over the last two decades, US residents have sold a total of around US$5.5 trillion worth of IOUs to foreigners, yet the officially recorded net investment position of the US has deteriorated only by a little over half of this amount (US$2.8 trillion). The US capital market seems to have acted like a black hole for investors from the rest of world in which US$2.7 trillion vanished from sight – or at least from the official statistics.