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Negative Interest Rate Food for Thought

edited January 2016 in Off-Topic
Tabulation of just how much of the world is already there:
https://twitter.com/MktOutperform/status/693115818247237632/photo/1

After the BOJ move, negative bond yield universe now stands at $5.5 Trillion--- implications?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4825fab0-c684-11e5-b3b1-7b2481276e45.html?siteedition=uk
Global markets have capped a tumultuous start to the year with a record amount of outstanding government debt at negative yields, reflecting heightened investor pessimism over the outlook for economic growth and inflation. [...] Negative yields, once considered an improbable theory, now account for one quarter of JPMorgan’s index for government bonds as global central banks adopt increasingly abnormal policies to ward off the threat of deflation, leading to a rally in government bonds. Market interest rates fall as prices rise, resulting in a bizarre scenario in which rates have fallen below zero and investors are paying governments to hold their money.
Bernanke, not so long ago, stunned a reporter with an anecdotal quip in response to the question, when can we expect to see a more normalized fixed-income world? "Not in my lifetime," he replied. Hmmm, funny he never characterized that view with anything he said while he chaired the Fed. Looks to me we're headed further and further from that reality. Why? When currencies (and the cost of money) are continually mis-priced, how can markets be free to distribute capital where it needs to go?

I'm not sure what implications this has for us, as retail investors. But if the US central banksters should decide to "go there," I'm thinking we're gonna have to give it some serious thought.

Comments

  • I took ONE Economics course in school. I understand that prices and yields in bonds move inversely. I have some bond funds. One is strictly domestic. The monthly dividend was a bit thin for January. Negative yields will do what to my core-plus bond fund? DLFNX.
  • vkt
    edited January 2016
    There is so much bad financial writing out there.

    Is the metric in the article talking about real interest rate (which can go negative if the nominal rate for a bond is less than the inflation rate)? All that means is that the investor in such bonds is losing money to inflation holding those bonds. But then if the bond holder's currency was depreciating faster than the nominal value then it makes sense for people to hold a bond with negative real rates (or even negative nominal rates) to lose less of their cash position and without taking on risk. Negative rates aren't the armageddon people make it out to be. Just a psychological tick on a graph.

    BoJ decision had nothing to do with those rates. They changed interest rates only to excess reserve deposits held at the bank. How many of the people talking about NIRP as the natural progression of this are confusing target rates with deposit rates? Nothing forces a bank to lend to another at a negative interest rate, so no central bank can force that.

    Edited to add: As an appreciating currency, there would very little appetite for dollar holders to buy dollar denominated bonds if rates were negative. People would just hold the currency. Not the same for Yen or Euro. This is also the reason why banks even in Europe do not impose negative savings rates on retail customers. They would be afraid of people just hoading cash and losing deposit. The one anecdotal example of a bank having to provide a negative rate on a mortgage was because the rate was tied by the terms (badly it seems) to Libor and so when Libor went low, their mortgage rates had to go negative. They chose to reduce the mortgage capital instead. But this was an exception rather than the rule.

    In the US, retail borrowing rates are typically tied to Prime which is correlated with Fed Funds but not same. First, the financial institutions are unlikely to lend to each other at negative rates with a strong dollar and even if they did, the cushion above prime for most of these borrowing rates is high enough that Prime would have to go deep into negative territoty before the consumer borrowing rates went negative. Consumer deposit rates would hurt banks but they would not go negative on this banks because it would cause a run on the banks hurting them. So they will absorb the costs if it came to that.

    The biggest concern here would be that this might drive the nominal rates of very short term bonds of the type held in Money Market funds so low that they couldn't even make back the administrative costs and so break a buck causing a run for redemptions that would snowball. abernanke seems to think this was a concern during the last crisis but not any more.
  • edited February 2016
    The first link is a short overview of cash reserve rates paid to depositors by The Federal Reserve Bank, a.k.a., taxpayers. The second link is the new current rate of .50%, also paid on excess reserves.

    Why is interest still being paid for "excess cash" reserves???

    I can't find my saved list of depositors......tis at the Fed. site somewhere, too.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_reserves

    http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reqresbalances.htm

    Have not posted this for some time, so will place here again.
    This is the 10 year bond list for major government issues, globally.
    This page is not over populated with links and junk, and one will find a few clickable tabs near the page top and an interesting choice of topics along the right edge, including a "view" by country clickable.

    http://www.tradingeconomics.com/bonds

    Regards,
    Catch
  • edited February 2016
    HA! I thought my wild-eyed dream would last a little longer than a couple of days--WRONG
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-02/rates-less-than-zero-is-bank-stress-fed-wants-to-test-in-2016

    To get some ideas about what might happen, perhaps the best place to go would be Europe, from people who are already "living the dream".

    Just wait until corp bonds go negative, too:
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-02/deutsche-bank-s-jim-reid-just-wait-till-corporate-bonds-go-negative-too
    Big quote from Jim Reid piece:
    http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/02/02/2152019/corporate-bond-yields-and-the-cold-pull-of-negativity/#respond
  • edited February 2016
    Some interesting questions from the blogspot of a Brit who's been around a few financial blocks:
    https://notayesmanseconomics.wordpress.com/2016/02/02/will-the-spread-of-negative-interest-rates-lead-to-a-ban-on-cash/
    pension obligations
    insurance co's / annuities, etc. long-term liabilities
    criminals and their machinations
    ban on cash entirely @ retail level
    [comment section on this site is often good, and well-supported by the blogger himself]
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