Willem Buiter: massive dollar collapse ahead...

The long-held assumption that US assets - particularly government bonds - are a safe haven will soon be overturned as investors lose their patience with the world's biggest economy, according to Willem Buiter.

Professor Buiter, a former Monetary Policy Committee member who is now at the London School of Economics, said this increasing disenchantment would result in an exodus of foreign cash from the US.

"...There will, before long (my best guess is between two and five years from now) be a global dumping of US dollar assets, including US government assets. Old habits die hard. The US dollar and US Treasury bills and bonds are still viewed as a safe haven by many. But learning takes place. The notion that the US Federal government will be able to generate the primary surpluses required to service its debt without selling much of it to the Fed on a permanent basis, or that the nation as a whole will be able to generate the primary surpluses to service the negative net foreign investment position without the benefit of “dark matter” or “American alpha” is not credible.

So two things will have to happen, on average and for the indefinite future, going forward. First, there will have to be some combination of higher taxes as a share of GDP or lower non-interest public spending as a share of GDP. Second, there will have to be a large increase in national saving relative to domestic capital formation."

To read Prof. Buiter's Financial Times blog post on the US economy please click HERE