Macro Musings with David Beckworth cover image

Hanno Lustig on Dollar Dominance, Dollar Safety, and the Global Financial Cycle

Macro Musings with David Beckworth

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Exorbitant Privilege

The US is the world's insurance provider. We're willing to take on a little bit more risk than the rest of the world, and they pay us a premium for that. That's why we get to run current account deficits. We're collecting an insurance premium. And when bad things happen in the world, actually, that sort of exorbitant privilege only increases because there's more demand for safe assets. So it pushes up the gap between the yield on a treasury and a synthetic treasury that you construct from a German or an Italian bond. It causes the dollar to appreciate in turn.

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