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Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate
- adrianN 11y agoCan someone explain to me why both cheap oil and expensive oil seem to be bad for the economy? Back when oil was >$100 per barrel everybody seemed to blame the weak economy on expensive oil. Now somehow very cheap oil is also a bad thing.
- wrong_variable 11y agoI agree - its sloppiness from our "leaders" in the field of economics.
- dazc 11y agoCheap oil is bad for net exporters of oil and good for net importers. And visa versa. I get the impression the media are always talking about an imminent financial catastrophe because eventually they'll be right and we'll forget how many times they have been wrong.
- danharaj 11y agoon the other hand, we know they'll be right eventually.
- nextweek2 11y agoIt's both good and bad for me. It's cheaper to fill my car up however my pension funds investments in the mineral sector have fallen. Only in the long term will I know how I faired. My hope is that I am buying in the down market and the producers are optimising for the next decade.
- tim333 11y agoThey cause different problems: Expensive oil - costs more as you'd expect. Cheap oil - good but leads to falling prices so savers leave their money in the bank waiting for discounts so spending in the economy falls. The second one is an odd thing that only happens in a deflationary environment.
- dnautics 11y ago"cheap" is "bad" because it encourages "hoarding". Instead, those that run the economy would much rather put you on a treadmill of devaluation, which forces you to keep working harder (better unemployment figures!) and consume. Basically short shrift the working class of the value of their income - it's a backdoor paycut for workers[0]. It also forces the middle class into investing directly or indirectly (through pension funds, 401ks, etc) in the stock market, which is great for the ̶r̶i̶c̶h̶ economy and socializes the downside of entrepreneurial risk while letting entrepreneurs keep the upside. [0] Don't take my word for that, it's in the words of nobel laureate Paul Krugman: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-higher-inflation/?_r=0 http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hig... "Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sustained basis."
- dilemma 11y agoThat inflation means decreased real wages is elementary and doesn't need a source support the statement. It completely misses the point, however. What is needed to have a strong, growing economy with increasing prosperity for more than the one percent isn't high or low inflation, but stable price levels that makes it possible to plan for the long term and make investments into productivity and efficiency. When witch doctors in the Fed, ECB and BoJ arbitrarily manipulate interest rates and thereby inflation, they promote speculation over investment and move wealth to the 0.01%.
- dnautics 11y agoThere weren't stable prices by any means from 1800-1900 but would you say there wasn't a growing economy? The US even was able to support the freeing of slaves and their entry into the marketplace as laborers over that term.
- lmm 11y agoBig price swings are bad for the economy - everyone ends up wrong-footed.
- cdnsteve 11y agoThey are great for investment opportunities however.
- unknown_apostle 11y agoThe idea is that cheap oil would be caused by a worsening economy with less demand for it.
- singham 11y agoMost likely cheap oil is put Russia in place.
- akerro 11y ago, Norway, Turkey and ISIS.
- green7ea 11y agoHonest question: why Norway? I thought it was more about Russia, Iran, Venezuela, ISIS and that Norway was simply collateral.
- akerro 11y agohttp://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-economy-insight-idUSBREA4703Z20140508 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-norway-economy-insight-idU...
- oblio 11y agoThat article's lead picture is silly. I'm willing to bet that the woman in the picture is from my country instead of being an actual Norwegian. Shameful journalism, portraying Norway's economic problems like some sort of meltdown.
- richardwhiuk 11y agoExpensive oil is bad for the economy because it's expensive to produce things. Cheap oil is bad news for the economy, because it's an indicator in a fall in production, if the reason it's cheap isn't because of new fields, but because of lower demand. Even if it is due to new sources (e.g. fracking) the perception that it's an indicator of global production may be sufficient to override any realistic benefits.
- jevgeni 11y agoOil price is a symptom of some other underlying problem. During $100+ oil the problem was that supply couldn't satisfy the market (mostly due to Chinese growth and demand for energy). This raked the price up not just for the Chinese, but for everybody. Which was bad if your factory needs oil to produce your widgets: higher production cost leads to either thinner margins (and hence less future investments) or higher prices (and hence lower demand and ultimately - thinner margins). So ok, the oil companies invested in expanding capacities, built refiners, oil rigs, etc. to satisfy demand. But now the world doesn't need as much of it as it used to. Well, shit. That means you still have to pay off loans for your new and shiny oil rigs, but you can't sell as much oil as quickly. What does that mean? Thinner margins. Ad nausem.
- otabdeveloper1 11y agoCheap oil is taken as a signal of deflation, and deflation is very bad because it happens when the economy is too broken to make investing worthwhile.
- fennecfoxen 11y agoIgnoring the obvious climate-change issues just for the moment to focus purely on the relation of oil prices and the economy... From the global perspective, cheap oil is a very good thing. Cheap commodities in general are an unmitigated good thing. Cheap oil means that people spend less money to move vehicles around and heat homes, and can spend it elsewhere. Cheap oil means trade is cheaper, allowing goods to be produced in more-efficient places and then shipped instead. Cheap commodities mean that investors spend less money building oil rigs and mines, and can invest it elsewhere. Final goods and services where oil or other commodities are an input become less expensive, allowing other economic activity to be pursued. The reasons cheap oil could be linked to bad stuff in the world economy are not because the oil itself is cheap, though. Cheap oil could be bad because it is a sign that no one wants to buy oil, which is a sign that people aren't shipping goods and other economic activity is depressed. (This is a cause of cheap oil, though, not an effect.) The other big reason it could be bad is that it is a sign that people have invested too much money drilling for oil and building oil-extracting machines and training people to be oilfield workers and the like. Too-cheap oil suggests that this investment was a bad idea and should not have been made, or at least not made yet, and now that effort has been at least partially wasted. But that's another cause of cheap oil, and not an effect. The people who suffer from cheap oil are those who are involved in the production of oil: oil companies themselves, companies who provide services to oil companies, pipeline companies, railroad companies involved in shipping oil, workers out on the oil fields, companies involved in providing services in those regions (e.g. real estate firms in the right parts of the Dakotas)... and investors in any of those companies (including pension funds). The US is involved in a lot more oil production than it used to be, so some of that suffering partially mitigates against the awesomeness of cheap oil to the rest of its economy. (Partially. Most of the US is not involved in producing oil.)
- vox_mollis 11y agoCheap oil is bad at this precise moment because of the enormous quantity of soon-to-be-impaired debt that was issued by the energy industry on the assumption of perpetually high oil prices. Debt contagion remains as a risk, just as it did in 2008.
- pasquinelli 11y agoi think it isn't that cheap oil is bad for the economy but that cheap oil can be a sign of a bad economy, one where the destruction for the demand for energy has outstripped what should ought to be a tight supply.
- wrong_variable 11y agoI do not understand this. Japan imports almost all of its oil and commodities. Shouldn't low price of oil and commodities result in a massive surplus for a country that sells high value added goods ? Buy iron for cheap and sell robots for a high price. Now the argument many people will make is that the people who are buying the high-value added goods won't have money anymore - but the argument can be made in the opposite way too - high prices of oil and commodities will result in lower surplus - meaning growth will be most in countries who produce oil and commodities. Citing "low price of oil" as a reason for economic woes just seems like bad science - I though economists were better than this ?
- chillydawg 11y agoStable prices with a gentle growth are better for everyone. It's not important if oil is cheap or expensive in the long run, what matters is that you can make sensible forecasts and do long range planning without having to worry about one of your main inputs wildly fluctuating in price and causing havoc across the board.
- cbowal 11y agoNo everyone - there's a lot of money to be made from volatile price swings.
- guard-of-terra 11y agoOil is cheap because China is having problems. And they were perhaps selling robots to China. Yes, cheap commodities should benefit Japan but when they're cheap because demand is weak, Japan suffers from that too.
- dilemma 11y agoThe Japanese economy is dependent on exports of robots to China?
- beachstartup 11y ago
- acd 11y agoBut it did not work in the 1990s for Japan, why would it work better a second time? The zero lower bound problem refers to a situation in which the short-term nominal interest rate is zero, or just above zero, causing a liquidity trap and limiting the capacity that the central bank has to stimulate economic growth" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_interest-rate_policy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_interest-rate_policy http://www.thedailybell.com/exclusive-interviews/35987/Anthony-Wile-Dr-Antal-Fekete-Blowing-Up-Modern-Austrian-Economics--in-a-Good-Way/ http://www.thedailybell.com/exclusive-interviews/35987/Antho...
- fennecfoxen 11y agoI was reading the Wall Street Journal analysis recently, which agrees this won't help much, nothing that while it's designed to provoke investment "the gap between corporate cash flow and investment stands at a record 6% of GDP. If firms wanted to invest, they could go to their own vaults." They recommend this measure only if combined with structural reform (especially labor reform), observing "Japan’s rigid labor system has led firms to refuse to hire more “regular” workers, whom they cannot lay off during slack times. Instead they hire “nonregulars”" and do not invest in training and human capital and doing little for these workers' futures. After that they suggest fiscal stimulus, but observing that past "fiscal stimulus" has been mostly handouts to inefficient farms in rural districts to buy votes they instead recommend measures like making public high schools free (!!) and getting sewage systems to the 40% of the population that doesn't have them (!!!). http://www.wsj.com/articles/negative-rates-wont-save-japans-economy-1454347656 http://www.wsj.com/articles/negative-rates-wont-save-japans-... (usual paywall dance applies)
- kriro 11y agoI'm sure none of the hedge funds that were recently discussed as betting against the Yuan had any insider information there. "[...] ,in a Surprise, [...]"...riiiiiiight.
- jetskindo 11y ago> a sign of the continuing global trouble from plummeting low oil prices Gas is one of those things I have no control over. If it's expensive I have to pay, if it's cheap I have to pay. I'm dependent, and in a city like Los Angeles the alternative is impossible. They raised the price of public transport to a point where it is not even convenient. So when I go to the gas station and it's cheap I'm happy. I fill it up and have a smile on my face. Am I doing it wrong?
- lmm 11y agoIf the price you pay doesn't cover the externalities (i.e. tax that includes the cost of cleaning up an equivalent amount of CO2 etc. emissions) then yes you're doing it wrong. If you're covering all that then sure, enjoy. In the more general case, rapid price swings cause trouble all round (they make it hard for everyone to plan) even when the price adjustment is "correct". For the economy as a whole, low prices are better than high prices, but a stable price would be better than a volatile price even if the volatile average price was lower.
- richardwhiuk 11y agoIf it's cheap because demand is low, and you work in an industry which is susceptible to world demand, then a low oil price might mean your industry might be about to enter a downturn. So while you might be happy about the cheap oil, you might worry about your job prospects.
- pjc50 11y agoGenerally it isn't bad for you if you're not in the oil industry or an oil-dependent country. Places like Venezuela, Nigeria, and even the fabulously rich KSA are in trouble though. It may be bad if you're in an energy-intensive business that's just made investments in reducing its fuel costs, because now the payoff for those investments is worse. The US was just starting to transition to an oil exporter due to unconventional oil, but now the price has collapsed the boom in North Dakota etc goes away.
- narrator 11y agoThis is going to be great for the U.S economy: http://useconomy.about.com/od/glossary/g/yen_carry_trade.htm http://useconomy.about.com/od/glossary/g/yen_carry_trade.htm > Definition: The yen carry trade is when investors borrow yen at a low interest rate. They exchange it for U.S. dollars or any currency in a country that pays a high interest rate on its bonds. They receive a low-risk profit when they receive high interest on the money invested, but pay low interest on the money borrowed. The broker pays the difference into the account each day the trade is open >The yen carry trade is alive and well in 2015, but not with the U.S. dollar. That ended in 2008 when the Federal Reserve dropped the Fed funds rate to near zero. It continued with high-yield currencies such as the Brazilian real, Australian dollar, and Turkish lira. For example, many forex traders borrow near-zero yen to buy Australian dollars which have a 4.5% return. This is where all the money lent out is going to go, from the Japanese negative interest rate to the new slightly above zero U.S bond yield. Keeps the party going for a little while longer. Follow the money.
- jevgeni 11y agoThis is not that clear cut. Dollar will appreciate against the yen. This will be advantageous to imports from Japan and disadvantageous to U.S. exports. I can't speculate on the intensity though.
- narrator 11y agoThose yen loans will buy our bonds though. This will increase credit availability. The whole system runs on credit availability. The housing bubble should have made that clear.
- riskneural 11y agoCredit slushes around like crazy for years. These days it flows into an S&P trading near 20 P/E, negative government bond interest rates, corporate bond interest rates below historical default rates, reinsurance treaties and cat bonds trading below expected value, and what else? Demand needs to pick up with credit availability or it just leads to asset bubbles.
- Patient0 11y agoThis was news.... 3 days ago. I don't understand how it's rocketing up the HN front page only now.
- jevgeni 11y agoOn FT or Bloomberg, yeah. HN has more important things to do, like arguing if one can call a variable "iGiveHead" in a FOSS project[1]... ____ [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11018019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11018019
- ifdefdebug 11y agoYou just had to find a way to pull the gender issue into a thread that has nothing to do with it right? Completely off topic, sorry.
- jevgeni 11y agoNo. To be clear: I used sarcasm[1] to highlight the in my opinion ridiculous preferences of HN readership. ___ [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm
- ifdefdebug 11y agoI see. And of course I take that wikipedia link to sarcasm for sarcasm. Anyway, the heavy discussion around this post seems to disprove your point making your sarcasm harder to spot.
- jevgeni 11y agoYeah, it's very silly.
- Cyph0n 11y agoWe have a winner here. If you don't like what people discuss here, go to Financial News.
- riskneural 11y agoI remember, in 2009, spending the effort to go through the code to make sure we had a check to set the interest rate to zero if it went negative in the simulation. Because negative interest rates make no sense, right?
- ifdefdebug 11y agoWhen the value of money falls very deep in a crisis and investors don't want to invest but keep their money liquid, then banks may charge you a fee for allowing you to park your money with them, instead of paying you for loaning it to them. So yes, negative interest can make sense. And maybe you coded a bug into your application instead o a feature, based on wrong assumptions...
- nopassrecover 11y agoIsn't it the case that a central bank primarily lends? In this case aren't they effectively paying banks to borrow? Given 0% interest rates haven't led to desired economic investment and stimulus the approach of the ECB and BOJ seems like wishful thinking that "more of the same" will somehow create different results. While it's clear the stock market benefits from the increased investment, it's not clear that this addresses the lack of aggregate demand in the economy (which as mentioned seems highly influenced by demographics). Then again this is probably more about lowering currency value than stimulating domestic demand.
- riskneural 11y agoThey are effectively paying banks to lend. The aim is to stimulate investment, and also to drive inflation by making money less valuable.
- riskneural 11y agoNegative risk free rates were theoretically possible, but thought at the time to be stupid. See for example the development of the Cox Ingersoll Ross model, "The standard deviation factor, \sigma \sqrt{r_t}, avoids the possibility of negative interest rates for all positive values of a and b." Many interest rate models had been in the past either criticised for theoeretically allowing negative rates, or specially developed to avoid them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%E2%80%93Ingersoll%E2%80%93Ross_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox%E2%80%93Ingersoll%E2%80%93...
- dzdt 11y agoThe backstory here is demographics. Japan has a shrinking, aging population and almost no immigration. With fewer people there are naturally less things bought, sold, and produced. Japanese authorities have been trying to pump the economy by deficit spending (central government borrows money and spends it), quantitative easing (central bank buys long term private debt, increasing the money supply for short term spending) and low interest rates. The central bank has to push people to invest in the economy, because without growth driving investment returns, generally people would rather the safety of a savings account giving a guaranteed if small interest rate. Negative rates are a way to push money into the investment economy even with no growth.
- derefr 11y agoQuestion: if the government doesn't want people "parking their money" in government bonds at all... then why not just stop issuing government bonds altogether, thus giving banks no choice but to invest in the market instead? Is that somehow impossible? Would it make the market illiquid? Are there laws concerning the required volatility caps for the securities backing savings accounts that would have to be relaxed?
- revelation 11y agoThey would presumably just invest it into other countries' government bonds? With the low interest rates, that has already been going on: borrow Japan money at low interest and buy a high interest government bond.
- ascorbic 11y agoThis isn't about government bond rates. It's the rate for overnight deposits at the central bank. Here's an article that talks about the alternative to this: holding cash. http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21679231-central-banks-are-still-testing-limits-how-low-interest-rates-can-go-bankers http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21679231...
- stephenboyd 11y agoLike most countries, Japan's government runs a deficit and depends on selling bonds for funding.
- EGreg 11y agoInstead of pushing people to reinvest into the economy, there is a more sustainable way: 1. R&D AND ROBOTS 2. TAX AUTOMATION 3. BASIC INCOME FOR ALL, growing as tax revenues grow This will let a shrinking population be more productive and align the resources more usefully for everyone - including old people - to spend on their needs.
- marcosdumay 11y agoThis, this, and this again. I just don't understand how lending to banks at negative interest rates is tried before basic income. Or better, I can imagine a few reasons, none of them good. Really, I don't get how people even accept bank settling rates that are smaller than the short term government bonds. That's just taking money from the people, and sending it for free to banks - no strings attached.
- frozenport 11y agoThe population isn't shrinking fast enough. Take a look at youth unemployment in Western Europe.
- woodpanel 11y agoMaybe OT: Isn't this just proof that Japan needs to let go of it's biggest barrier to growth? By which I mean it's non-existing immigration? I've been recently to Japan and despite my fears Tokio was a really affordable place (leaving out the hotel prices of course). I thought this was due to the lack of growth and the recent quantitative easing and other government measures. Measurements that seem to be failing at the moment (thus the negative rates). So cheap Tokio-Sushi is nice for European tourists, sure, but just a sign of how much growth Japan has lacked over the past years/decades that it suddenly becomes a tourist destination. In contrast to that: I could imagine Japan, with its still high quality of living and modern, orderly society as a real draw for young and skilled talent from abroad if it were to open it's borders (and society). Think about it in the terms of Gentrification: It's an artificially undervalued "part of town". One which value and (currently) cheap prices would sureley be appreciated by the pioneers this country needs.
- jessaustin 11y agoLots of people have tried immigrating to Japan, because it is awesome in so many ways. However, the drawbacks that keep people from staying seem kind of inherent to how society is set up: http://japaneseruleof7.com/japan-scam/ http://japaneseruleof7.com/japan-scam/
- s986s 11y agoHonestly, nationalism is a bit refreshing. By immigration what you then are implying white business individuals and/or non-japanese otaku would only be able to afford or figure out a way. If you are thinking of poorer individuals. Why? Their business is doing well and what exports are not are likeky not solvable through a domestic workforce outside of marketing and/or tech. If you want more babies in a country, I believe denmark had a much better idea than to enable immigration, do it for mom. The pioneers the country seem to already there. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/01/japanese-firm-to-open-worlds-first-robot-run-farm http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/01/japanese-...
- yuiyui 11y ago> By which I mean it's non-existing immigration? That's not a bug, it's a feature. Japan enjoys the advantages of having a civilized, educated, homogeneous, high trust society, and they're not willing to abandon that in exchange of what, low skilled workers they don't need and ethnic conflict?
- asmosoinio 11y agoThe Euribor, widely used in EU, has also been negative for about a year now: http://www.euribor-rates.eu/euribor-charts.asp http://www.euribor-rates.eu/euribor-charts.asp
- tosseraccount 11y agoNegative Interest Rates happened in the US in late 2008: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2008/12/09/three-month-bill-yield-goes-negative/ http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2008/12/09/three-month-bill-...
- race2tb 11y agokicking the can down the road.
- scotty79 11y ago> As Japan’s economic doldrums have lingered, its leaders have tried a number of tricks over the years, from ... to flooding the financial system with cash. How was that done exactly and why it didn't work?
- larrydag 11y agoI believe it was done through quantitative easing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing#Japan_before_2007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing#Japan_befo...
- HSO 11y agoThose who think Japan is unique in its condition and/or that the answer to its problems is more of the same old "advice" as proffered by standard issue economists and business types might profit from Robert Gordon's recently published "American Growth". (paper version: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315.pdf) At least, it can offer a different, longer-term perspective on the issues. It's not impossible that we will look back in 20 years and see Japan not as some sort of failure but simply as the first society that had to learn to live without growth.
- laotzu 11y agoGrowth for the sake of growth is cancer
- djsumdog 11y agoExactly, you cannot have infinite growth. Consumerism and planned obsolescence depend on ever expanding growth. Why can't we just have...enough? Why don't we create things that last decades instead of years? We can scale down, consume less, pollute less. We could have fewer factories that produce higher quality products. We could pay people more. We could have a minimum income so we'd get more art and entertainment instead of useless plastic shit. It's not possible because our current heavily capitalistic world view is ingrained so deeply in the minds of everyone in high income countries. I've mentioned it before, but Debt: The First 5,000 Years is an incredible book that goes into the history of money, debt and slavery. It's a life-changing book.
- api_or_ipa 11y agoUnlimited growth in capital is impossible, see the Solow growth model taught in intermediate macro classes the world over. Growth in human capital, education, productivity and ultimately technology is much harder to analyze. On one hand, these things are subject to decay similar to capital depreciation; on the other, we've escaped every Malthusian catastrophe through innovation and technological growth.
- madhermit 11y ago
- hysan 11y agoI understand the economic theory behind encouraging banks to lend, but I don't see how this will encourage companies to borrow. I've been under the impression that companies aren't willing to borrow because expansion/growth is very risky right now primarily due to the population not wanting to spend money. If people don't spend money, then expansions will fail simply because the company wouldn't be able to bring in positive cash flow to pay back even a 0% interest loan. And people aren't spending money due to several factors. Some big ones being: 1. The general population doesn't want to spend money because of the lack of/slow income growth. So savings appear safer. 2. Aging population means fewer youths and more elderly people every year. The elderly population would be living off of savings/pension so they are essentially on a fixed (and slowly depreciating due to inflation) income. Spending cannot increase here. 3. Youths, meanwhile, are faced with entering an economy that isn't expanding (direct result of companies not wanting to spend). So you aren't exactly boosting the number of spenders in the economy. Then there is the very quiet startup economy which is not helped by Japan's hiring system. Salaries are seniority based and there is far less jumping between companies because of that. Also, if a graduating student misses out on the annual hiring season, they are very much unlikely to get hired for a stable job until the following year at which point they will have to compete with a fresh batch of graduates. So if you choose to go the startup route, every year you do so results in worse earnings and a far more difficult road to stability should your startup fail (which most do no matter what country you live in). So what I'm wondering is: How is the negative interest rate supposed to fix the borrower side of the equation? Supply means nothing if there is no demand. I haven't read much about Abenomics, but the couple of things I have looked into all point to Abe focusing only on the lending side. There doesn't seem to be anything that is promoting confidence on the borrower & buyer side. What have I missed here?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- sitkack 11y agoJapan is the future of us all, and it needs to transition to steady state economy where the interest rate pays back in technology and efficiency, not Yen. To be so rich, yet so poor because of how economies are structured is ridiculous.
- matzipan 11y agoThis article is a few days old... It's not a surprise anymore, and even 5 days ago it wasn't a surprise, but expected.
- fiatmoney 11y agoThere's a huge difference between negative interest rates on the part of the government as a lender and as a borrower. As a lender (ie, giving out loans that only need to be paid back in part), they mean the gov is essentially giving away money (which constitutes an incredibly corrupt bargain with the banking establishment, but is obviously distortionary on face regardless of who's getting the deal). As a borrower (ie, charging to hold money at the fed) they're essentially collecting a fee for various regulatory and quasi-seigniorage services. For instance, if you require assets to be held in certain forms (central bank deposits, government bonds...), a negative yield is basically charging for providing an asset that satisfies those regulatory requirements.
- kaonashi 11y agoHow is this supposed to create more creditworthy borrowers?
- tamana 11y agoIs 0 interest actually a special value? It seems to me that interest rates are only interesting relative to other investment options
- leemailll 11y agoI am wondering how can japan sustains such an interest rate? Also, will this create a real estate bubble?