According to most newspapers, pundits and Op-Eds, they'd have you believe that the US is paying far more income to overseas investors/RoW than we are collecting from them in return, [and of course the world is going to hell in a handbasket.]
Since I had read this about eleventy-million times, I thought it was true.
Silly me.
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releas...current/z1.pdf
Billions of $$$, SAAR 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Q1U.S. income payments to rest of world 278.8 275.0 280.0 363.9 481.5 635.7 691.4 U.S. income receipts from rest of world 322.4 305.7 336.8 410.2 513.3 665.6 734.7
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Turns out, the Rest of the World still pays the US more than they collect from us, and has been for some time, about $285bn just in the past few years. </b>
My guess is the media confusion doesn't know [or purposefully obscures] the difference btw the above relationship, and transfer payments that immigrants ship home to their relatives which is slightly larger than the above differential.