Money: The Dollar Drought

Seen through foreign eyes, U.S. dollars are something like U.S. tourists or soldiers: foreigners may grumble when too many of them come over, but they really howl when the flow is cut back. Now that Washington has tightened up on the spending and lending of dollars abroad to close the U.S. payments gap, the cries are rising from Bern to Canberra. The U.S. has been a vast commercial bank to a capital-starved world, having pumped $25 billion abroad in the past decade, and other nations are reluctant to part with this rich source of money. Said London's Evening Standard...

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