Demand For Big Bills Soars As NIRP-Fearing Japanese Stuff Safes With 10,000-Yen Notes
Earlier this week, we were amused but not at all surprised to learn that Japanese citizens are buying safes like they’re going out of style.
The reason: negative rates and the incipient fear of a cash ban. “Look no further than Japan’s hardware stores for a worrying new sign that consumers are hoarding cash–the opposite of what the Bank of Japan had hoped when it recently introduced negative interest rates,” WSJ wrote. “Signs are emerging of higher demand for safes—a place where the interest rate on cash is always zero, no matter what the central bank does.”
Put simply, the public has suddenly become aware of what it means when central banks adopt negative rates. The NIRP discussion escaped polite circles of Keynesian PhD economists long ago, and now it’s migrated from financial news networks to Main Street.
Although banks have thus far been able to largely avoid passing on negative rates to savers, there’s only so long their resilience can last. At some point, NIM will simply flatline and if that happens just as a global recession and the attendant writedowns a downturn would entail occurs, then banks are going to need to offset some of the pain. That could mean taxing deposits.
As we noted on Monday, circulation of the 1,000 franc note soared 17% last year in Switzerland in the wake of the SNB’s plunge into the NIRP Twilight Zone. As it turns out, demand for big bills is soaring in Japan as well.
“Demand for 10,000-yen bills is steadily rising in Japan, even as the nation’s population falls and the use of credit cards and other forms of electronic payment increases,” Bloomberg writes.
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