A few years back, before this crisis erupted, several economists were concerned about the sustainability of the large global imbalances fueled by the so-called Bretton Woods II system. These economists recognized, in the tendency of export-led economies to manage their exchange-rate systems, the origin of large trade and current account surpluses that, via large foreign reserve accumulation, were financing the mirror image of those surpluses, namely the large U.S. trade and current account deficits.
