by Pater Tenebrarum
Acting Man
Reader Questions on Negative Interest Rates
Our reader L from Mumbai has mailed us a number of questions about the negative interest rate regime and its possible consequences. Since these questions are probably of general interest, we have decided to reply to them in this post.
[…] Before we get to the questions, a few general remarks: negative interest rates could not exist in an unhampered free market. They are an entirely artificial result of central bank intervention. The so-called natural interest rate is actually a non-monetary phenomenon – it simply reflects time preferences. Time preferences are an inviolable category of human action and are always positive.