OK, so I agree with you. If banks were really wholesale lending money at negative interest. I think that they're not and this just makes for a good story. Ms. Christiansen seems to be an anomaly and they even point out that "Even Ms Christiansen will still pay the bank each month due to the fees on her loan." I know a bunch of investors who would borrow an infinite amount of money in Denmark if they got paid by the bank to do so, including myself, so clearly this isn't a condition that could persist since commercial lending rates are a function of supply and demand.No, that's just it. When someone takes a mortgage from the bank, the bank pays them a slight amount of interest on the mortgage. You still have the mortgage payment to make, but the interest portion of the payment is actually a credit to you, from the bank.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7f4e2f4c-dde3-11e4-9d29-00144feab7de.html
Given this, why would the bank want to lend out money?
BTW, thanks for the nice reference, it made it very clear what we were talking about.