"The more desirable scenario is that deficit countries curb and reduce debt, and surplus countries are prepared to boost their domestic demand," she said.
The statistics behind phrases such as debt, deficit, surplus, recovery and borrowing can appear to be a confusing array of numbers and percentages.
Meanwhile the United States continues interminably to run vast current account deficits and goes ever deeper into debt to surplus nations -- not least to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Denmark.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has climbed into his Hummer and driven California even deeper into debt, reintroducing surplus-year car tax refunds in a year of staggering deficits.
"The biggest problem in Russia isn't debt, it's surplus," he says.
"We will also continue to bear down on the deficit and the debt, achieving a surplus by the end of the parliament," Duncan Smith claimed.
The finance minister, Aleksei L. Kudrin, said Russia needed to issue commercial debt despite that surplus because economic stimulus spending would result in budget deficits.
If he stuck to that "prudent" policy of paying down the debt, the new surplus figures suggest that all the debt in public hands could be paid back during the ten-year budget-projection period.
1. Budget for 2001: Vote on a $1.83 trillion budget for next year, increasing spending for the military and education, cutting or freezing spending in many other domestic programs, reducing taxes by at least $150 billion over the next five years and paying down publicly held debt with the surplus generated by Social Security.
The measure calls for increases in spending on the military and education; cuts or freezes in many other domestic programs; a reduction in taxes by at least $150 billion over the next five years; a new $40 billion prescription drug benefit as a part of Medicare, and paying down publicly held debt with the surplus generated by Social Security.
