If surpluses cause as many problems as debts, maybe we need to tax creditors
We owe a debt to China. We also owe Germany. The question is, should we pay them back? And just as importantly, should we continue to buy their stuff at current prices when they just stick the profits in a vast bank account in the sky and hoard the lot.
They get richer and we get poorer. Not because they are somehow fantastically efficient at making things, though there is an element of that, but because they have artificially low exchange rates. The Germans have profited vastly from a lower euro than they would have enjoyed had the Deutschmark remained valid currency. The Chinese keep pumping out goods at a dollar-pegged rate. Should the yuan be floated freely, we would all be paying much more for our flat-screen TVs.
Britain, it has to be said, has taken a different attitude to debt repayment than mainland Europe. We have allowed inflation to rip, something that devalues our currency. We have also allowed our exchange rate to fall in relation to other major currencies.
So anyone who has lent money to Britain has already suffered something like a 30% cut in the repayment value of the debt following a 25% fall in the rate of exchange and 5% rise in inflation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2012/jan/03/debt-surpluses-china-germany-keynes