'World needs more financial balance'

Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer said on Saturday Europe wanted to see a steady rebalancing in the global balance of payments that would avoid "brutal crises or tensions".
Speaking at a conference in the southern town of Aix, Noyer said the current global balance of payments, in which the United States is in effect borrowing huge amounts of capital from much poorer countries like China, would appear paradoxical to a hypothetical visitor from Mars. "He would perhaps conclude...that these imbalances were not necessarily the best allocation of international capital," he said. "And there, in my opinion, his point of view would be close to that of Europeans."
The yawning US current account deficit has been a subject of persistent concern to policy makers for a number of years but there has been little sign of a steady re-balancing, which they have been calling for.