One of the paradoxical consequences of the eurozone crisis is that German surpluses are likely to increase, as the country's powerful export engine benefits not only from world recovery but also from a depreciated currency.

Since the international financial crisis broke out in 2007, it has often been blamed on global imbalances, reflected in large current account deficits or surpluses. The blame exercise came as a surprise. Academic economists usually treat imbalances not as a problem but rather as an easy measure of the extent to which the world was globalised. In the 19th century, Britain ran surpluses for decades while Australia and the US had equally long-term deficits, without provoking any global crisis.

Yet it now looks as though international imbalances are a sign of tension and conflict rather than a cause for celebration. Predictably, people in deficit countries tend to blame the problems on the surpluses. Thus loose monetary policy in the US in the 2000s is ascribed not so much to decisions of the Federal Reserve, but to the Chinese undervaluation of the renminbi in order to produce high levels of employment in export industries. This policy then generated – as an unintended consequence – large increases in reserves, which in turn fed into the American financial system.