NIRP

[Tim Liston]

Hey, anyone wanna talk about negative interest rates? I'm looking for some REAL ACTION!!! I'm "working" from home today and these boards sure are dead....

[Tim Liston]

My goal is to author the least-read post in Deck history. One that even Kate and Corey will ignore. How am I doing? I figure if I bump my own post on a late Sunday night with even more arcane jabberwocky, nobody will notice and my view rate of under eight per day will drop even further! But if I get to 100 views before it falls below the fold I'll have to try again. Maybe then I'll write about the death of multi-employer pensions or something.

Negative interest rates are the sign of an economy that is so dead that the only hope of resuscitation is free money. And the trick is, all that free money is not inflationary because it has no velocity. The "multiplier effect" that they used to teach in high school economics, back when they bothered to teach economics in government high schools, is now just about zero. That's because free (new) money is most often borrowed at 0% by corporations to buy (and prop up the price of) their own stock, or saved by ordinary people or used to trim debt. It's not used to buy things, except over the last 2-3 years to move cars off the lots (and even that's played out now). Little else. NIRP is a last resort. I'm guessing that as the U.S. loses "reserve currency" status, we'll also dispense with positive interest rates. Then as our economy finally starts turning blue we'll sink into NIRP like so many other countries have already done. Most notably Japan, who pretty much leads the way when it comes to economic implosion. Japan could end up medieval again when the yen goes worthless. When it comes to printing money, Japan has no equal, not even the U.S. or China.

[Corey Rossen]

Now that you speak badly of me, should I be rooting against you? Do I know you? You make this place so
difficult with your backhanded comments yet it is me you see as the problem.

Ah, the hypocrisy of some people on the Deck.

Don't make Gary Rice have to travel to another portion of the Deck.

I love this place.

[ryan costa]

John Bogle had written "Don't Count On It". It is possible to interpret this optimistically.
Our nation has a massive surplus of capital that is not presently invested in producing anything.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8335 ... ount-on-it