A blog post from BEA Director Vipin Arora
Have you ever noticed how some things just go better together? Probably tops on my list are peanut butter and chocolate—neither one is the same without the other. But don’t forget about raisins and bran or watermelon and feta cheese (surprisingly better than it sounds).
I also feel that way about our quarterly International Transactions Accounts (ITAs) and International Investment Position (IIP) accounts. The ITAs summarize economic transactions between our country and the rest of the world, while the IIPs are our balance sheet of external assets and liabilities.
You can see right away why these complementary views of flows and stocks go well together. In fact, when BEA first began producing the ITAs in the 1920s, the IIPs were included. The IIPs were separated out in 1954 and have been published on their own since.
This year, we’re bringing them back together. In March we’ll accelerate the release of our quarterly IIP statistics and combine them with the ITAs. This will give users a snapshot of the stock (dollar position) of U.S. financial assets and liabilities measured at a specific point in time, alongside the financial flows (transactions) that contributed to changes in the dollar position.
Because some things are just better together