The U.S. Balance of Payments and the Sinking Dollar

This excellent explanation of the balance of payments and exchange rates is aimed mainly at the mistakes of the media. As to policy, "the balance of payments does not matter if the exchange rate floats freely without management." The trouble starts because governments won't let it do so, and even if the Americans accepted the argument of the author (a former Treasury official), "there appears to be little that we can do" to make foreign governments keep their hands off the dollar.