Its Sunday morning in Kazakhstan and cold. My meetings in Almaty are over and I am heading home today via Dubai (backwards to go forwards). It has been a long week and it hasn’t been helped by the fact I have come down with a heavy cold. But overall a lot was accomplished, not the least being the startng dialogues with the Central Asian government officials. I have also been thinking about the book on economic development that we have started working on (with a colleague at the Asian Development Bank). In this context, today’s blog is about development, trade and modern monetary theory (MMT). Many readers have asked me to comment on recent articles in the Australian press about our current account situation. So-called experts (not) are claiming the budget balance has to be cut back quickly to avoid an external crisis. The reality is that they fail to understand what the current account balance is about.