If you go to the BEA Web site (http://www.bea.gov) and look at the Survey of Current Business for July 2007, table 1 on "U.S. International Transactions," you will find that in 2006, U.S. income receipts on its foreign assets were $647.6 billion (line 13), while the country's payments on liabilities to foreigners were $604.4 billion (line 30).

Yet we saw in this chapter that the United States is a substantial net debtor to foreigners. How, then, is it possible that the United States received more foreign asset income than it paid out?