PARIS, Sept 9 - Global currency trends pose no immediate threat to the stability of financial markets, but the U.S. external deficit could become a risk to the dollar in the medium term, a senior IMF official said on Tuesday. "For now and the foreseeable future, I'm not concerned," Gerd Haeusler, director of the International Monetary Fund's capital markets department, told a news conference in Paris. The recent strengthening of the dollar had been driven by expectations that U.S. growth would outpace that elsewhere, especially in Europe, Haeusler said.
However, he noted that capital inflows to the United States had shifted from portfolio investment and mergers and acquisitions activity towards the buying of securities by foreign central banks. "The question is: is this sustainable medium term? Difficult to assess," he said. "Is there a potential vulnerability if that were to stop? The answer is yes, there is a vulnerability."///