The asset price bubbles are no accident.
They are a necessary component of the mechanism that generates the needed US demand.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, June 29 2005

As Maurice Obstfeld of the University of California at Berkeley and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard note, a big reduction in the US current account deficit that does not include sizeable exchange rate and macroeconomic adjustments in Asia would impose a devastating shock on the already troubled eurozone.

Maintenance of liberal trade in Europe would prove impossible.