as he argued that they were in a stronger position to do so and as he regarded their surpluses as negative externalities imposed on the global economy. Keynes suggested that traditional balancing mechanisms should be supplemented by the threat of confiscation of a portion of excess revenue if the surplus country did not choose to spend it on additional imports. However his ideas were not accepted by the Americans at the time. In 2008 and 2009, American economist Paul Davidson had been promoting his revamped form of Keynes's plan as a possible solution to global imbalances which in his opinion would expand growth all round without the downside risk of other rebalancing methods. Post-Washington Consensus developments Speaking after the 2009 G-20 London summit, Gordon Brown announced "the Washington Consensus is over". There is now broad agreement that large imbalances between different countries do matter; for example mainstream U.S. economist C. Fred Bergsten has argued the U.S. deficit and the associated large inbound capital flows into the U.S. was one of the causes of the financial crisis of 2007–2010. Since the crisis, government intervention in BOP areas such as the imposition of capital controls or foreign exchange market intervention has become more common and in general attracts less disapproval from economists, international institutions like the IMF and other governments. In 2007, when the crises began, the global total of yearly BoP imbalances was $1680 billion. On the credit side, the biggest current account surplus was China with approx. $362 billion, followed by Japan at $213 billion and Germany at £185 billion, with oil producing countries such as Saudi Arabia also having large surpluses. On the debit side, the US had the biggest current account deficit at over $1100 billion, with the UK, Spain and Australia together accounting for close to a further $300 billion. While there have been warnings of future cuts in public spending, deficit countries on the whole did not make these in 2009, in fact the opposite happened with increased public spending contributing to recovery as part of global efforts to increase demand. The emphases has instead been on the surplus countries, with the IMF, EU and nations such as the U.S., Brazil and Russia asking them to assist with the adjustments to correct the imbalances. Economists such as Gregor Irwin and Philip R. Lane have suggested that increased use of pooled reserves could help emerging economies not