Free Republic

In the 1920s, capital began flowing from Massachusetts to North Carolina, a process that continued until after World War II as textile mills migrated to the South from New England. Beginning in the 1950s capital moved again as textile manufacturing moved to Mexico, India and Malaysia. Capital has long moved to where it can be used most productively, and by and large, that has been a good thing. Whether capital moves within a country or between countries, its flow addresses imbalances between available local capital and uses for capital (otherwise known as investments). Through much of history, the major capital...

The International Monetary Fund will say further depreciation by the US dollar is needed to help correct global imbalances in its latest World Economic Outlook (WEO), Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung said on Saturday. Quoting from a draft of the WEO, the paper said the Washington-based fund argued "extraordinarily aggressively" for a correction in exchange rates, above all so as to reduce the massive US current account deficit. The dollar, which slid to a 2-year low against the euro last week, should continue to depreciate in the mid-term, while the yen, the Chinese yuan and currencies of oil-exporting countries in the Middle...