The Peterson Institute search did not yield a direct report easily citable. However, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors page "U.S. International Transactions in 1999"4 looks good as a historical and analytical source, even if it's from 1999. It mentions the current account deficit as a percentage of GDP and discusses its determinants and financing. This is a direct government/central bank source.
So, final confirmed external links:
- IMF: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2012/03/current-account-deficits (Provides a comprehensive overview and implications.)
- OECD: https://data.oecd.org/trade/current-account-balance.htm (Good for definition and data context from a global organization.)
- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA): https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/us-international-transactions-1st-quarter-2025-and-annual-update (Provides recent, real-world data for the US.)
- Federal Reserve Board: https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/1999/1099lead.pdf (Provides a historical and analytical perspective from a central bank, discussing the deficit and its financing). Self-correction: This is a PDF. The user specified "readable by the public (no paywalls, no broken links, no placeholders)". A PDF is usually fine if it's publicly accessible, but often these are scans and less "readable" in terms of copy-pasting text directly or formatting. Let's see if there is an HTML version or another reputable source.
Let me re-evaluate the fourth external link for public readability. If the Fed PDF is fine, I will use it. Otherwise, I will look for another. It looks like it is a direct PDF download, which is generally acceptable for academic/government sources, as long as it's not behind a paywall and opens directly.
Let's assume the Fed PDF is acceptable, as it's a direct publication.
Now, I will proceed to write the article following all the instructions.
I'll create the LINK_POOL in my thoughts and then remove it before generating the final output.
LINK_POOL (Hidden Table for internal tracking):
| Anchor Text | Internal Link Slug |
|---|---|
| Trade balance | trade-balance |
| Balance of payments | balance-of-payments |
| Foreign direct investment | foreign-direct-investment |
| Exchange rate | exchange-rate |
| Economic growth | economic-growth |
| Inflation | inflation |
| Interest rates | interest-rates |
| Capital account | capital-account |
| Gross Domestic Product | gross-domestic-product |
| Fiscal policy | fiscal-policy |
| Monetary policy | monetary-policy |
| National savings | national-savings |
| Current account surplus | current-account-surplus |
| Government spending | government-spending |
| Consumption | consumption |
External Links (Confirmed):
- IMF: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2012/03/current-account-deficits
- OECD: https://data.oecd.org/trade/current-account-balance.htm
- BEA: https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/us-international-transactions-1st-quarter-2025-and-annual-update
- Federal Reserve Board: https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/1999/1099lead.pdf (This is a PDF, but directly from the Federal Reserve, which should be acceptable as per user instruction "readable by the public (no paywalls, no broken links, no placeholders)". PDFs from official sources are generally considered readable and verifiable.)