The global flow of funds in 2003 was pretty easy to figure out once the BIS annual report come out. The US ran a current account deficit of $530 billion. Most other countries – though not Australia, the UK and a set of Eastern European economies -- ran current account surpluses. Most of the US current account deficit was financed by $442 billion in dollar reserve accumulation by the world's central banks ($487 billion if you include the $45 billion transferred to a couple of Chinese state banks).

Overall reserves increased by a bit more than $442 billion in 2003. The world's central banks bought around $60 billion of euros and yen, and the value of the central banks’ pre-existing holdings of euros and yen increased by around $100 billion because of moves in the dollar/ euro and dollar/yen. So total reserves increased by $615 billion. The world's central banks ended 2003 with about $3 trillion in reserves, $2.1 trillion in dollars, and $0.9 trillion in euros, yen and everything else.