19 ms·
Entire German bond yield curve back in sub-zero territory
- leereeves 5y agoWho is buying these bonds with negative returns? > the European Central Bank’s statement that it had bought many more bonds in the last two months than the bloc’s top four countries sold. Oh.
- lumost 5y agoI am curious if we're entering a period where western governments must run deficits and central banks must purchase said debt at sub zero interest rates to keep the economy running. In principal this could occur if there were large capital “sinks” in the economy where paper money is being removed from circulation or it's velocity plummets. This could occur if for instance certain economic actors could acquire large cash flows that they then deposit into illiquid non productive assets. E.g. Housing, universities, Large rent speaking corporations with offshore accounts, individuals with the same.
- bit_flip 5y agoAs someone living in Europe, I’m really not sure how to financially insulate myself anymore. It’s not clear which asset class is safest to protect against inflation or a large negative economic event
- toomuchtodo 5y agoOwn your home, keep a small emergency savings account (~10k EUR), invest outside the bloc (VT, VTI, VEMAX). You've got robust social safety nets, any returns are gravy. Some currency risk is unavoidable. (educational purposes only, not investing advice, pay a pro a fixed fee for an hour or two of time)
- Deukhoofd 5y ago> Own your home Easier said than done.
- pjc50 5y agoIf you don't own your home, that is a far higher priority than trying to protect a comparatively tiny sum of savings from inflation hitting the dangerous heights of 5%. Far more important is keeping your salary up with inflation, since for most people 1y salary > savings.
- imtringued 5y agoYes, you have to switch jobs frequently to get those inflation adjusted raises.
- legulere 5y agoBut if the asset bubble bursts and your home loses most worth.
- poooogles 5y ago>But if the asset bubble bursts and your home loses most worth. Luckily the primary function of a home is to provide shelter. You don't have to worry about being out on the street if you're unemployed (pending you can afford local taxes).
- pjc50 5y agoSibling comment gets it: regardless of everything else, you must "consume" housing, either as a capital good or in rent. Home ownership insulates you from shocks to the rental market. It's possible that the house price falls by 10%. It is very, very unlikely that rents will crash by 10%; they're sticky, at best you'll see a very slow slide over years.
- est31 5y ago
- wsc981 5y agoI believe you should have some crypto (some percentage of your net worth). At the very least Bitcoin, maybe also a bit of Ethereum.
- tormeh 5y agoI'd go with an ACWI ETF, if you want returns. Gold is also an option, I suppose, if you want to hedge against the economy and don't really need any returns.
- yann2 5y agoChocolate, Cheese and Wine.
- MattGaiser 5y agoVirtually any asset thats not cash should do given that the response to any negative economic event is going to be fiscal and monetary stimulus.
- throw0101a 5y ago> It’s not clear which asset class is safest to protect against inflation […] The Rational Reminder podcast looking into this and basically concluded that there is no hedge: * https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/150 https://rationalreminder.ca/podcast/150 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f0dns9fHFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f0dns9fHFs The best you can probably do is have some debt which will worth less and less over time as its nominal value stays the same whereas you get cost of living (CoL) increases with your salary so have more money in really terms to pay it off. Other than that equities have (generally, but not always) had good enough nominal returns so that you get a real return increase in your investments.
- WanderPanda 5y agoWhere did we end up if shorting your currency is the only way to go? I could not sleep well with the potentially unbounded loss
- imtringued 5y agoYou short the USD by borrowing in USD, spending USD while it is still valuable and then wait for it to devalue. Deflation is a bad thing so the Fed won't let it happen. Of course the flaw with this is that I get 4% interest on personal loans so I actually can't make money off of this strategy.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoGold. Gold essentially functions as a short on paper currency. If you're wrong, you'll lose money, but it won't be an unbounded loss.
- throw0101a 5y agoGold isn't as much of a hedge as most people think. Two papers by Erb & Harvey cited in the podcast: * https://www.nber.org/papers/w18706 https://www.nber.org/papers/w18706 * https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2639284 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2639284
- dragonwriter 5y agoFor inflation, you probably want to diversify broadly among productive assets. For insurance against negative economic events... that's a more rapidly evolving, short-term issue. To the extent you can do it, it is a matter of identifying near term risk sectors, and minimizing exposure to the and/or having investments in areas negatively correlated with the at risk sector.
- wsc981 5y ago> I am curious if we're entering a period where western governments must run deficits and central banks must purchase said debt at sub zero interest rates to keep the economy running. I think that as long as the EU wants to keep the political Euro project going, there is no way around such policies, since having rates go up could cause Southern European countries to default and would cause the EU to implode.
- eli_gottlieb 5y agoSounds about right. There seems to be little political will to actually "euthanize the rentier", or even put a cap on how much income rent-seekers can accrue nonproductively. The result is that "landlords are eating everything." https://exponentsmag.org/2019/08/25/software-was-eating-the-world-now-landlords-are-eating-everything/ https://exponentsmag.org/2019/08/25/software-was-eating-the-...
- imtringued 5y agoDo you remember that MMT thing? That thing that says the government can create as much money as it needs and if there is inflation (doesn't matter if CPI or not) then you tax the part of the economy where inflation happens to return the money. A wealth tax on deposits and land would be ok. The rich can buy bonds or stocks if they want. If there is a shortage of companies you can always create new ones. If there is a shortage of money or land it's much harder.
- jonkho 5y agoCash spent on housing, universities etc doesn’t “sink into a hole and disappear”. Someone else on the other side of the transaction got it and can spend it. On the other hand, raising taxes to collect said cash to neutralize the debt would be a “sink”.
- missedthecue 5y agoIts silly how many otherwise smart people forget that income = expenditure. Whatever you spend is someone elses income. That money doesn't get incinerated.
- Proven 5y ago> I am curious if we're entering a period where western governments must run deficits and central banks must purchase said debt at sub zero interest rates to keep the economy running It's been that way for 13 years, so you'd better. There's no money simply because there's too much bad debt and all banks and governments that matter are insolvent.
- missedthecue 5y agoIf you buy a house, that money isn't in a sink. It goes to the person that sold it to you. And they spend it on something else. Similar situation for "illiquid nonproductive assets". Whoever sells them gets the cash. If it sits in a bank account, the bank loans it out, where the borrowers spend it again. Bezos isn't keeping $200 billion out of circulation. He owns 10% of a $2 trillion company.
- go_elmo 5y agoSwiss central bank bonds are negative for decades and seem to be popular still. If you're scared of a crisis I bet you're interested too.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- selectodude 5y agoModern monetary theory, baby! We'll see if it collapses, but I guess it'll be fun to see it in action.
- hnbad 5y agoIf I remember correctly, the bonds may only be sold by the government to a fixed list of banks and those banks can then sell them to the ECB or the general public. The level of indirection serves no practical purpose but is ideologically justified with the argument that banks are more likely to consider the market when deciding whether to buy the bonds or not even though they can just sell to the ECB without any losses.
- acover 5y agoGlobally diversified bond funds do. Such as the etf vgro.to I don’t understand the benefit of an individual buying such a bond when not forced to. Holding cash seems better than unless you think rates will go even more negative!
- recursivedoubts 5y agoinflation, negative nominal rates (to say nothing of real rates) and if the central banks so much as breath towards tightening the enormous asset bubble they have blown begins imploding... a lovely job, and well done
- toomuchtodo 5y agoI don't see an alternative for managing secular stagnation and growth traps. Metaphorically, you're essentially guiding and supporting someone passing out to the floor so they don't get a concussion when they hit their head ("soft landing"). You're (or rather, your macro economy is) headed to the floor no matter what. See: Japan [1] 1. What is Japanification? It’s a term used by economists to describe a state of chronically anemic economic growth and feeble inflation or even deflation similar to the conditions faced by Japan since a giant real-estate bubble popped in the early 1990s. It’s used to convey the alarming prospect -- often discussed in Europe, which has staggered economically ever since the 2008 financial crisis -- of sluggishness so deep that it is extremely difficult to escape. Even after Japan’s central bank embraced two extraordinary forms of monetary stimulus -- negative interest rates and asset purchases worth more than the entire size of the world’s third-largest economy -- the country has yet to return to a positive growth cycle strong enough to generate 2% inflation after nearly three decades. 2. What is secular stagnation? It’s a term originally coined by the Harvard economist Alvin Hansen in the 1930s to describe the tendency of mature industrial economies to move toward instability in the absence of large amounts of public investment. It echoed the ideas laid out by John Maynard Keynes in his seminal 1936 treatise, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.” At the time, the global economy was mired in a deep depression, and theories like Keynes’s and Hansen’s offered an explanation and a prescription for the way out. In recent years, amid rock-bottom interest rates in the wake of the biggest global downturn since the 1930s, another Harvard economist -- former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers -- revived the phrase to capture basically the same idea. 3. Are they the same thing? Essentially, yes. Japanification can be seen as a subset of secular stagnation, with characteristics matching those that have specifically plagued Japan. The country’s rapidly aging and shrinking population has contributed to the slowdown of economic activity, and to a high saving-low investment environment despite ultra-low interest rates. The Bank of Japan also complains about a deflationary mindset that has taken hold of consumers and companies that inhibits higher spending or higher prices. Japan’s example offers other countries an unsettling vision of their possible future. “We’re essentially at the Japanese place,” Summers told Bloomberg Television on March 12. “That’s a place that’s very hard to get out of.” (my note: the future for all developed countries is Japan) [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-17/japanification-secular-stagnation-and-bad-bad-news-quicktake https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-17/japanific...
- funemployed 5y agoKuai Liang welcomes his German comrades in the fight to destroy the corrupt Lin Kuei
- thih9 5y agoThis is a reference to Mortal Kombat video games, Kuai Liang is the name of a character known widely as Sub Zero.
- flerovium 5y agoAn interesting read is https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp2016-05.pdf https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp2016-05.pdf What's often missed in this analysis is population. Interest rates are tightly coupled to population growth and even with negative interest rates, a country needs to see Japan-scale population decline to risk Japanification. The virus has accelerated EU population decline and exacerbated the North/South fertility divide. It's natural to think that as the long-term outlook for the virus worsens (over the next several years), this would have a non-negligible effect on interest rates. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-births-analysis/analysis-covid-19-worsens-europes-inequalities-in-yet-another-way-the-fertility-gap-idUSKBN28B3XA https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-bir...
- frockington1 5y agoWhy is the virus going to worsen? Are Europeans more resistant to the vaccine? Death rates in America are almost entirely the unvaccinated by now
- rossdavidh 5y agoActually, total deaths from all causes (among vaccinated and unvaccinated taken together) have been back to near-normal levels since March. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
- hnarn 5y agoThe claim was "death rates in America are almost entirely the unvaccinated by now", which is correct. And cases are going up. Excess mortality, in the past few months no less, is completely irrelevant, not only in scope of time but also to the statement being made.
- throw0101a 5y agoIf anyone is interested in near-real time updates, I've found this site to be handy: * https://www.investing.com/rates-bonds/germany-government-bonds https://www.investing.com/rates-bonds/germany-government-bon... They have the rates of most countries if you poke around.
- belter 5y agoGood site. I recommend also for general stats: https://tradingeconomics.com/ https://tradingeconomics.com/ The 10 year German bond is here: https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/government-bond-yield https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/government-bond-yield
- domano 5y agoI do think that smart contract based finance on blockchain protocols is necessary to stabilize captialism as a whole / to have predictable cycles instead of longer cycles with worse crashes. At least you cant change inflation on a whim there (aside from on chain governance votes, but at least those are transparent and done by holders)
- te_chris 5y agoI just can't even being to understand this argument. Just because you're internally stable doesn't mean others will deign to agree.
- pjc50 5y agoThe "hardness" of money is unrelated to the boom/bust cycle, which is why the world went off the gold standard and Bretton Woods in the first place.
- Hermel 5y agoBy having hard money, the system has one less moving part and is a little less complex and less erratic.
- pjc50 5y agoA car with no suspension has one less moving part and is considerably less comfortable. (I'm slightly surprised that HN isn't amenable to the hydraulic control theory of the economy, and the relatively simple maths behind central bank control of rates which has been hugely successful at driving down inflation)
- jonkho 5y agoA broken hydraulic if that. Interest rates have been pushed down and stayed down over the decades.
- 5y ago
- nabla9 5y agoEuro area yield curves https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/financial_markets_and_interest_rates/euro_area_yield_curves/html/index.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/stats/financial_markets_and_intere...
- andi999 5y agoSo what does this mean?
- DasIch 5y agoIt means now is a great time for the German government to make some investments into crumbling infrastructure, even if that means taking on debt.
- andi999 5y agoSo it is not important for the people?
- NonContro 5y agoRebuilding a modern generation of modular nuclear power plants would be a good idea. Natural gas prices have just spiked in Europe because Russia is limiting supply. Solar and Wind can work but there are big demand management problems, and there doesn't appear to be any progress on allowing or requiring EVs to charge smartly (ie. based on the prevailing electricity price, including discharging).
- fundatus 5y ago> Rebuilding a modern generation of modular nuclear power plants would be a good idea. Never gonna happen in Germany. The last nuclear power plant in Germany will shut down for good at the end of next year. Last year the share of electricity generated from renewables was 46%.
- WanderPanda 5y agoDon't forget that the remaining 54% (points) will be exponentially harder to replace
- fuoqi 5y ago>Natural gas prices have just spiked in Europe because Russia is limiting supply. Well, Russia simply plays by the rules Europe promoted itself. You don't want stable long term "take or pay" contracts with price tied to oil and instead you want to tie contracts to spot prices? What you ask is what you get. Don't blame others when they start to game those rules in their favor when situation is right.
- ryanmarsh 5y agoCan someone explain this like I’m five please? I don’t know anything about the bond market so the article reads like gibberish.
- breakfastduck 5y agoI see lots of comments like this floating around the internet, and while there's nothing wrong with learning, it's a bit silly to ask a question like this. You don't know anything about the bond market, so what is an article entirely about bonds going to do for you? A better starting point would be to find out what a bond is in the first place. I'm sure there's plenty of literature available. It gives me the same vibe as asking 'How do I build X in C++? I don't know how to program' instead of 'How do I learn to program C++?'
- ryanmarsh 5y agoGood point. I guess what I should have asked is “what should someone unfamiliar with the bond market understand about this article”
- pinum 5y agoMy impression after a few minutes of googling various bond-related terms is that this means: "Investors in German government bonds can currently expect a negative return on their investment, in both nominal and real terms, regardless of the bond's maturity date". which could be simplified further to "If you were to give a loan to Germany right now, you would lose money in the end, regardless of how long or short a repayment period you offer". Would you say that's close enough for a layperson ELI5?
- ryanmarsh 5y agoYes that’s exactly what I was looking for. Thank you. So then the next question is, what’s the broader implication for ordinary folks (German citizens even)?
- 5y ago
- belter 5y agoWe already knew a couple of things about economists and economic forecasting: - We knew economics can give Nobel prizes even in the same year, to practitioners defending absolutely and completely opposite theories: "Nobel prize-winning economists take disagreement to whole new level" https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/10/nobel-prize-economists-robert-shiller-eugene-fama https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/dec/10/nobel-prize... https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/and-the-nobel-prize-in-economics-goes-to-polar-opposites-1.1560563 https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/and-the-nobel-pr... - Many were also aware that: “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable” John Kenneth Galbraith "Despite forecasters’ best efforts, growth is devilishly hard to predict" https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2016/01/09/a-mean-feat https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2016/01/09/a... Or we could go less diplomatic :-) "Joke about 364 Economists" https://youtu.be/XB1ciodyM1w https://youtu.be/XB1ciodyM1w So these officials were allowed to make decisions under the political pressures of the governments that named them. Their supposed independence will be used by governments to excuse themselves from their responsibilities. Its the usual trick of naming a commission with selected experts to get the recommendation you want. Then you argue you are just implementing the recommendation of the 'independent' commission. The answer probably is that despite all the data and expertise, central banks know less than your average hedge funds or economics think-thank. These decisions were done by driving blind. I found this analysis unusually sober and interesting (for JP Morgan work...): "Entering uncharted waters: Understanding negative bond yields" https://am.jpmorgan.com/sg/en/asset-management/per/insights/market-insights/market-bulletins/entering-uncharted-waters-understanding-negative-bond-yields/ https://am.jpmorgan.com/sg/en/asset-management/per/insights/... Some interesting bits: ------------------------------- "Fixed income markets have entered uncharted waters, with over USD 17trillion of debt trading with a negative yield." "The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities by Frank Fabozzi, widely considered to be one of the most trusted resources for bond investing, has no mention of negative yields in its 1,803 pages. And yet today, negative yields are pervasive around the developed world..." "...Forced buyers are profit-agnostic: they are holding the bond for a reason other than making a profit. One example of a forced buyer is a central bank buying bonds in order to achieve asset purchase targets. In places like the eurozone and Japan, for instance, central banks own 21% and 48% of their own outstanding government debt..." "Negative-yielding bonds overseas are weighing down yields in the U.S. However, without the adoption of NIRP by the Fed it is difficult, but not impossible, for bond yields in the U.S. to go into negative territory." ------------------------------- Any analysis of what will happen next cannot be made based just on the Economics books sitting on your desk. For sure would require a political, sociology and psychology expertise your average economist is probably not qualified for. Certainly not the ones at your average central bank. The real fun will probably start if China and US tensions rise. The 10 year U.S. Treasury Yields was at 1.75% and its now at 1.15% and probably going now: "10-year Treasury yield drops to 1.15%..." https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/02/us-bonds-treasury-yields-rise-to-start-the-week-ahead-of-pmi-data.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/02/us-bonds-treasury-yields-ris... Hint to Economy academics. Predict US negative interest rates now! There is a Nobel prize somewhere waiting for you.
- alpineidyll3 5y agoFor all the high class jargon, interest rates are nothing but a game of hot potato, with the potato being bad credit to low growth corps. If people stopped pretending this is 4d chess, and call it like it is, maybe someday it could be fixed.
- steve76 5y agoHow stimulus spending can go wrong: People get the job done without buying. All that inflation just sits there and rots. Entities backed by the full faith and credit of the taxpayer, such as GNMA, keep their rates the same. Treasury rates now are meaningless. People start dying gracefully at home. $4 trillion of medicare and medicaid spending goes away no matter what laws are passed. People find the luxury of hands off free markets. Laws serve only to limit the violence, not add to it. Leadership stops using power for their own personal quest for celebrity.
- aazaa 5y ago> Falling U.S. Treasury yields were adding to pressure, she said, adding: “If U.S. Treasury (yields) were much higher... we would have been talking about a different kind of level.” This is a global phenomenon. Real 30-year yields are steeply negative in the US as well, with nominal yield at 1.85% and year-over-year CPI above 5%. But it helps to zoom out. This is part of a multi-decade trend in ever lower 30-year yields stretching back to the Regan administration. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS30 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS30 I challenge anyone to find a channel that long and that persistent (except for possibly the CPI). Keep following and you make the prediction of nominal 30-year yields touching zero within 3 years. Somebody is on the wrong side of this trade in a big way. Those who say the inflationary spike is temporary and will mean revert are buying bonds with wild abandon because once you break zero, you can always go deeper negative. And as yields fall, bond prices rise. Those who say we're on the road to permanent inflation and possibly more are looking for inflation hedges. The odd thing about this is that gold, the traditional inflation hedge has gone nowhere fast. It's also possible that both sides are wrong and what will actually happen will be unlike anything that has come before in terms of the ferocity and diversity of forces at work and ultimate pain/suffering. For right now, both extreme sides can point to data supporting their outlook. But for how long?
- ren_engineer 5y ago>The odd thing about this is that gold, the traditional inflation hedge has gone nowhere fast my guess would be people are putting that money into bitcoin
- martincmartin 5y ago> Real 30-year yields are steeply negative in the US as well, with nominal yield at 1.85% and year-over-year CPI above 5%. year-over-year CPI is backward looking: it compares one year ago to today. Treasury yields are forward looking: If I tie up money now, how much more will I get one year from now. Last year was pretty unusual. People expect the next year to be different.
- rightbyte 5y ago> Somebody is on the wrong side of this trade in a big way. My understanding is that banks get negative interest on deposits in the banking system over night from many European central banks. So if you pay say -0.x% on deposits then 1.85% over 30y is a bargain.
- H8crilA 5y agoAmateurs. Switzerland has a 50 year bond that was trading as low as -0.5%. Imagine that, paying CHF128 to get CHF100 sometime in 2070. This comes with a whole new approach to finance, such as infinite duration mortgages (you never pay them back). And they even have those with a floating interest rate, in case you would like to bet your entire net worth on the idea that rates will stay this low till you die (and till your children, who will inherit the house with the mortgage, die, and till their children ...). Brave new world.
- belter 5y agoYou want more fun? Here is the Portuguese Central Bank, some time ago, mandating all banks to apply negative rates to their mortgages within 10 days, in case the corresponding Euribor happens to be negative. (link in Portuguese) https://www.bportugal.pt/comunicado/instituicoes-obrigadas-refletir-taxas-de-juro-negativas-no-credito-habitacao https://www.bportugal.pt/comunicado/instituicoes-obrigadas-r...
- the-dude 5y agoThese mortages have been available in NL and DK as well ( I had one in NL ). My mortage did not pay me yet, but the negative rate was eating into the markup ( ~1% ). So for years I had a mortage with about 0.5% interest. I know of DK people actually got money out of their mortage.
- DasIch 5y agoIn Switzerland you pay tax on the rent you could in theory receive as a landlord minus maintenance cost and mortgage payments. I suspect that this is a far bigger contributor to infinite duration mortgages than the bond market.
- ComputerGuru 5y agoI upvoted you for adding context, but I have a question: minus mortgage payments or minus the interest on mortgage payments? There’s a huge difference.
- bruce343434 5y agoI'm a bit of a layman when it comes to financial stuff like this. Is there any place I can go to really understand what this headline actually means and what the implications are?
- belter 5y agoIn simple words, this means you lend me 100 bucks, and you agree that I will pay you much, much later...And only 90 bucks.
- Phelinofist 5y agoWhy should I do this?
- rossdavidh 5y agoWell it is very odd that you should want to do this, which is why it is notable. It means something odd is happening in the bond market. What, is up for debate.
- agilebyte 5y agoIndividuals: Your mattress is not big enough for all your cash and your neighbors are eyeing it too... Institutions: requirements that they hold a % of their portfolio in safe assets like bonds.
- treis 5y agoBecause the government provides the strongest guarantee of that money being there in the future. Banks can go bust or your money can get embezzled and so on.
- mjn 5y agoIn particular for larger amounts of money. Many countries have deposit guarantees for smaller amounts, so for most individuals it wouldn't make any sense to buy negative-interest bonds. For example, someone in the U.S. who wants to store $250k with a government guarantee can simply put it in an FDIC-insured bank account. I believe Germany is similar, though with a lower €100k guarantee per account. You can go a little higher by having multiple accounts at different banks (at least for FDIC insurance, the first $250k at each separate bank is covered). But if you have $10m or $100m to store, government bonds become the only practical way to get a similar level of insurance.
- MichaelMoser123 5y agoI wish that I could get negative interest on my mortgage; guess that only central banks can get away with this practice.
- HWR_14 5y agoPut all the ideas together. A negative-interest, infinite duration fixed rate mortgage. That's what I want!
- deegles 5y agoEssentially: basic income!
- hnarn 5y agoWe already have basic income, it's just reserved for the rich.
- MichaelMoser123 5y agoIn Israel we have had hyperinflation in the early eighties, I was told that some people got lucky on their mortgage, but only if it was an old deal that was not adjusted for inflation. (don't know if it is true, actually)
- IceHegel 5y agoBeyond the financial implications, I’m always struck by how bad the explanations are for secularly low rates. Most never leave the financial world. Unscientifically, it feels like low rates reflect highly diminished hopes for the future. F
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]