American and other lenders from the rest of the world clearly preferred to do business with well-known French, Dutch and Belgian counterparties, who then channeled the funds to the European periphery. France was a major financial hub, not because it had a huge trade surplus but because it had large, ambitious banks that were willing to borrow to lend: 445 billion euros flowed out of France and 447 billion flowed in, leaving a net imbalance of merely 2 billion euros.
