 The current account is the broadest measure of a country's interaction with the rest of the world. So if you are running a deficit, most importantly that means that you are importing more goods and services than you are exporting. The current account also includes net income on dividends and interest payments and there's a small component that is transfers things like foreign aid. Most recent data shows that the U.S. current account deficit is a much smaller share of the overall economy than it was as recently as 2007 and that is overall really good news. The very large persistent U.S. current account deficit was one of the most concerning challenges for U.S. macro policy makers and there are a number of reasons for that. The concern was that if you have a very large deficit you've got to fund it somehow and that essentially meant that the U.S. was either selling off its assets or accumulating debts relative to the rest of the world and that makes a country extremely vulnerable in the chance that other countries will reduce their willingness to invest and so that was a real problem. In fact that did not turn out to be what caused the crisis and in fact as I mentioned we are in a very different situation where the current account is at a very manageable size. At the same time economists always talk about pluses and minuses. Part of the improvement has resulted from very positive increases in U.S. exports and the challenge is whether the U.S. can continue to increase its exports to the rest of the world.