Current Account Statistics

Evan Jones of Alert and Armed has a detailed a rundown on the current account figures for several nations .

From the article;

Australia has a permanent deficit on the current account. Indebtedness of Australian residents denominated in foreign currencies increases year after year. The figures of selected countries above shows that the typical first world country runs a persistent surplus on current account. The only European countries with current account to GDP ratios comparable to Australia are Hungary, the Czech Republic, Greece and Portugal, countries on the margin of first world status. The juxtaposition highlights the peculiarity of the Australian situation.

And on the US and UK deficits;

The next stage in the evolution of Britain and the US was when the deficit in merchandise trade grew sufficiently large that it overwhelmed the surpluses in the Services and Income categories. The balance on current account goes into the red. This is the situation currently for the UK and the US.

Evan concludes;

This is not an argument for a strident mercantilism of the Japanese variety, for which substantial current account surpluses are pursued for their own sake. But persistent deficits point to something profoundly dysfunctional. It doesn't need to be like this. But nobody in power cares. And, as usual, if somebody has to pay for the consequences down the track, it won't be the people who entrenched the malaise in the first place.

Reserve Bank Current Account Deficit Figures

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released spreadsheets from the March 2006 Reserve Bank Bulletin. Unfortunately I am not an economist so not sure of what some of the information on the spreadsheets signify, however there is some interesting graphs that can be constructed from the data.

Current Account Deficit

This is a graph of the CAD. The current account is a balance of imports, exports and the movement of capital. I am reminded of cartoons where someone is doing a presentation and the red line dives off the screen, onto the wall and touches the floor.

Australia is the poster child for the Pitchford Thesis which is the policy of hands off management of the CAD if it is the private sector driving it.

Exports

The exports broken down by rural and non-rural is interesting. It shows a divergence from about 1980 onwards as rural became less and less important to Australia as an export industry.

Note that about 1980 is when the CAD started to go into chronic deficit.

Imports

I do not know what Intermediate and others means. I am guessing it is non-finished products?

Judging by that graph demand for imports has risen uniformly.

avocadia: Intermediate imports and CAD graph:

A definition of Intermediate input . I am extrapolating to assume an intermediate import is such an input that has been imported. I further assume that the difference between that and a consumption import is that the latter isn\'t used to produce anything.

I see a brief period in the early 70s where the current account deficit was a misnomer, but after that it\'s downhill, gently at first and then somewhat precipitously. I guess the big dump post-2001 is the result of oil prices going through the roof, but I\'m not an economist either and my lack of economist mojo makes me wonder why the CAD crashed after 2001 when exports and import graphs didn\'t also crash or jump respectively.
cam: After 2001: Cheap credit? Interest rates stuck low after the dot.com crash. In the United States it was a period of super-cheap money. IIRC the cheapest money had been since WWII. Australia had higher interest rates than the US, but still they were low by Australian standards.

cam
avocadia: Cheap money: Somebody was saying, it may even have been John Quiggin and I have a suspicious feeling it was in the Fin, that there has been a glut of cheap money globally.
adam: Cheap US money: Firstly I Am Also Not An Economist.

2001-2006 saw a huge recovery in the AUD-USD exchange rate (particularly 2004). This meant suddenly cheap imports as Australians discovered the Pacific peso was worth something again. The underlying reason for the shift was presumably the interest rate differential between Australia, with one of the highest rich world cash rates, and the US, which was holding its rates down near zero. Same goes for other big trading partners such as Japan (0 interest rates) and China (pegged to the USD).

I think the CAD looks so volatile because, like profits, it\'s the small difference between two large numbers. Over the 40 year period Cam has presented, the Australian economy itself has had significant growth, so its easier to get spikes.  As for the late spike, I suspect we were selling lots of dirt, but importing more (in dollar terms) back in the form of toasters, stationery, hard disks, Belgian beer, and so on.

As far as the Pitchford thesis goes (so that\'s what it\'s called, ohh) I\'m pretty much on board. The current account deficit can be a bit meaningless in the context of a floating currency.  I give a Japanese company money, they give me a car - where\'s the deficit?
avocadia: The deficit: Isn\'t it that the money you gave the car maker can produce 1.x cars, where x > 0. In effect, x% of a car is leaving the universe of discourse and not being returned in the form of, for example, y% of a chunk of coal - so far as the statisticians can determine at any rate.
cam: The argument with the Pitchford Thesis: and I think I have seen Ross Gittens argue it too, is that foreign lenders see Australia as a good bet, not only to get their money back, but also the interest too. Since Au\'s deficit is consumer/private driven (rather than government burden like in the US), it is the market in action.

But it also runs up against the common-sense point of view of honest finance. The average person\'s experiences are that you make sure money coming is greater than money flowing out. Kitchen table economics. So seeing a highly volatile graph like that, with chronic outflows, runs counter to common-sense perception.

I was looking through some Austrade graphs of the in/out flows from the states. Was interesting. I will have to post those graphs.

cam
adam: How wide is the Universe of Discourse: ... in this context? Are we talking about the Australian economy or the world economy? Is the CAD supposed to be money lost to Australia or wealth destroyed overall?

This sounds like the Pitchford antithesis ...
avocadia: Universe width: I assume the universe here is the Australian economy, however the compilers of the data define that. So imports and exports are measuring goods being brought into and leaving the Australian economy. Or maybe it is the deltas of value being exchanged.

Comparing Nations With Respect to Exports and Imports

We compared the current account deficit and its volatility in the past . I decided to try and have a look at how, in percentage terms of exports and imports, Australia stacked up in relation to other trading nations.

Adam made the observation in the discussion on the CAD that the volatility could be because it is the difference between two very large numbers. This graph supports that observation;

The scale certainly dampens the difference between Australia's export and import numbers in millions which were 86,251 and 103,891 respectively. It is hard to notice on that scale, but New Zealand is a net importer as well. Other than Canada, all the anglic nations are net importers.

This graph shows the percentage difference between exports and imports. The nations with burgundy columns are in trade deficit;

Germany is the surprise there for me. I know that Japan, China and South Korea pursue CAS policies to the exclusion of nearly all else, but I assumed that Germany would follow the same sorts of consumptive patterns as the US and Australia.
adam: Germany: ... has been experiencing low consumer demand / recessions, together with historically high unemployment, over the last few years IIRC.

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