Pettis - Repaying debt from CAB surpluses

No country can run a capital account deficit unless it runs a current account surplus, and these enormous countervailing pressures forced Germany, among other things, into an unsustainable borrowing path. Similarly since 2008-09 peripheral Europe has been under pressure to run capital account deficits (it must repay substantial borrowings and fund flight capital, but it has trouble borrowing without implicit ECB guarantees). Its ability to run countervailing current account surpluses, however, is constrained within Europe by Berlin’s refusal to allow a reflation of domestic demand and it is constrained outside Europe by Germany’s enormous current account surplus, which prevents a currency adjustment. This forces peripheral Europe into both rising debt and high unemployment, and it is only because Europe as a whole has forced the problem of weak German demand onto the rest of the world that conditions in Europe are not even worse...
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