{"id":48445,"date":"2019-09-13T15:20:55","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T20:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48445"},"modified":"2019-09-13T15:20:59","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T20:20:59","slug":"how-is-negative-interest-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48445","title":{"rendered":"How Is Negative Interest Possible?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cobdencentre.org\/2019\/09\/how-is-negative-interest-possible\/\">HOW IS NEGATIVE INTEREST POSSIBLE?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Germany has recently joined Switzerland in the dubious All Negative Club. The interest rate on every government bond, from short to 30 years, is now negative. Many would say \u201ccongratulations\u201d, in the belief that this proves their credit risk is \u2026 well \u2026 umm \u2026 negative(?) And anyways, it will let them borrow more to spend on consumption which will stimulate \u2026 umm\u2026 well\u2026 all of the wasteful consumption for which governments are rightly infamous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While those who are about to borrow may find cause to cheer (as opposed to those who have already borrowed, at higher rates, who are now disadvantaged by this move), the savers are harmed. How can anyone save in an environment where savings has a cost?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>John Maynard Keynes called for the \u201ceuthanasia of the rentier\u201d. Congratulations, Germany, we say in all sarcastic seriousness. You have gone even beyond Keynes&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/monetary-metals.com\/keynes-was-a-vicious-bastard-report-17-mar\/\">vicious idea<\/a>. Your rate is now negative!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Preference of the Savers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead of writing more on the destructiveness of this, we want to tackle a different question today. How is this possible? What are the mechanics? Why don\u2019t savers rebel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We wrote about the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/monetary-metals.com\/the-crime-of-33-report-27-may\/\">Crime of \u201933<\/a>&nbsp;a few months ago, and it\u2019s worth re-reading before going on. 1933 is when President Roosevelt made the dollar irredeemable. Prior to that, if you didn\u2019t like the interest rate, you could sell the bond and hold gold coins instead. The gold coin has no default risk. And, back then\u2014in the gold standard\u2013it had no price risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today one can own gold, to avoid default risk. This is a big part of why gold is now $1,500. But one takes price risk. And price volatility to be is considered a feature, not a bug, by the gold bugs!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HOW IS NEGATIVE INTEREST POSSIBLE? Germany has recently joined Switzerland in the dubious All Negative Club. The interest rate on every government bond, from short to 30 years, is now negative. Many would say \u201ccongratulations\u201d, in the belief that this proves their credit risk is \u2026 well \u2026 umm \u2026 negative(?) And anyways, it will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2491,431,7957,558,1389,8819],"class_list":["post-48445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-government-bonds","tag-interest-rates","tag-keith-weiner","tag-negative-interest-rates","tag-nirp","tag-the-cobden-centre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48446,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48445\/revisions\/48446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}