If negative-interest-rate policies (NIRP) sound like some kind of esoteric, unknowable concept, that’s not by accident.
It’s exactly what central bankers would like you to think.
In the same way people consider money something difficult to define, negative interest rates suggest some sort of complicated economic theory.
In fact, it’s very simple. Instead of being paid to lend money, negative rates mean it costs you to lend. It’s like the laws of physics have been turned upside down, as though gravity began to push rather than pull.
This “Bizarro finance” underlying NIRP couldn’t exist without fiat money and central bankers hell-bent on destroying its value. I first mentioned this last year, when I recommended a negative rate protective profit play that’s since gone on to do better than double the markets’ return. At that point, negative rates were already eating into Europeans’ savings.
The situation has only gotten worse in the meantime, with trillions more in sovereign debt under negative rates, and as you’ll see, more banks “offering” their depositors a negative rate.
What’s worse, the idea of negative rates is growing more popular among the global central banking set… including, ominously, Janet Yellen’s U.S. Federal Reserve.
That’s right: NIRP could be the next hot European import, and the results could be devastating to the unprepared. But it will also work to turbocharge that protective profit play I told you about…
Savers Are Being Punished All Over the World
Back in March last year I told you about a Danish student, Ida Mottelson, who was working towards her master’s degree in health sciences.
As it were, her bank told her she would have to pay a 0.5% fee to leave her funds on deposit. Ms. Mottelson was not happy.
Here’s how rates have looked to European and Japanese “savers” over the past several years. The change has been dramatic.
