you pay the bank interest on your accounts
scroll down to '1972'
http://www.ubs.com/1/e/investors/history/1970/1970.html
scroll down to '1972'
http://www.ubs.com/1/e/investors/history/1970/1970.html
Quote from RussellDaytrade:
not so far-fetched, it feels like that is already the norm, to some degree...the banks don't pay interest, and they loan it out for upwards of 10 average, so in essence, the above scenario already exists.
Quote from pitz:
Seriously though, has anyone actually tried negative interest rates in a modern economy?
Negative interest rates should encourage inventory builds of things like commodities, and would help the banks re-liquiefy themselves.
Is 0% really the floor for interest rates?
Seems to me that it would be a lot fairer to institute negative interest rates and actually *pay* borrowers to borrow, than it would be for Federal Reserve and Treasury officials to run around helicopter-dropping money on the worst securities possible.
At least orderly liquidation of debts with negative interest injections of cash into the market would result in the realization of fair value for securities. This $700 billion bailout package has corruption and backroom shennanigans written all over it.