<P> The balance of payments (BOP) is the place where countries record their monetary transactions with the rest of the world . Transactions are either marked as a credit or a debit . Within the BOP there are three separate categories under which different transactions are categorized: the current account, the capital account and the financial account . In the current account, goods, services, income and current transfers are recorded . In the capital account, physical assets such as a building or a factory are recorded . And in the financial account, assets pertaining to international monetary flows of, for example, business or portfolio investments are noted . </P> <P> Absent changes in official reserves, the current account is the mirror image of the sum of the capital and financial accounts . One might then ask: Is the current account driven by the capital and financial accounts or is it vice versa? The traditional response is that the current account is the main causal factor, with capital and financial accounts simply reflecting financing of a deficit or investment of funds arising as a result of a surplus . However, more recently some observers have suggested that the opposite causal relationship may be important in some cases . In particular, it has controversially been suggested that the United States current account deficit is driven by the desire of international investors to acquire U.S. assets (see Ben Bernanke, William Poole links below). However, the main viewpoint undoubtedly remains that the causative factor is the current account and that the positive financial account reflects the need to finance the country's current account deficit . </P> <P> Current account surpluses are facing current account deficits of other countries, the indebtedness of which towards abroad therefore increases . According to Balances Mechanics by Wolfgang Stützel this is described as surplus of expenses over the revenues . Increasing imbalances in foreign trade are critically discussed as a possible cause of the financial crisis since 2007 . Many keynesian economists consider the existing differences between the current accounts in the eurozone to be the root cause of the Euro crisis, for instance Yanis Varoufakis, Heiner Flassbeck, Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz . </P> <P> Since 1989, the current account deficit of the US has been increasingly large, reaching close to 7% of the GDP in 2006 . In 2011, it was the highest deficit in the world . New evidence, however, suggests that the U.S. current account deficits are being mitigated by positive valuation effects . That is, the U.S. assets overseas are gaining in value relative to the domestic assets held by foreign investors . The net foreign assets of the U.S. are therefore not deteriorating one to one with the current account deficits . The most recent experience has reversed this positive valuation effect, however, with the US net foreign asset position deteriorating by more than two trillion dollars in 2008, down to less than $18 trillion, but has since risen to $25 trillion . This temporary decline was due primarily to the relative under - performance of domestic ownership of foreign assets (largely foreign equities) compared to foreign ownership of domestic assets (largely US treasuries and bonds). </P>

When did the u.s. current account balance experience the largest surplus