Reference no: EM13868848

In the United States' currency union, we seem never to worry if a state has a big cur- rent account de?cit. Have you ever seen such data in the newspaper? Can you even ?nd the data in any U.S. government statistical sources? For example, one would guess that the state of Louisiana ran large current account de?cits after it was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But Louisiana's possible current account de?cit was not deemed worthy of coverage by the ?nancial press. We do know, however, that in 2008, Greece had a current account de?cit of 14.6 percent of GDP, Portugal had a de?cit of 12 percent of GDP, and Spain had a de?cit of 9.8 percent of GDP (Table 20-3). Should the governments of these countries worry about such large de?cits? (Hint: Relate your answer to the debate over the need for the SGP.)