from King World News
As we approach the end of 2019, yields are rising around the world as the Cass Freight Shipping Index tumbles for the 12th straight month.
The End Of NIRP?
December 19 (King World News) – Peter Boockvar: As widely expected, the Riksbank officially said good riddance to 5 years of negative interest rate policy, the first central bank who had taken the plunge of slapping a tax on its banking system expecting it to be stimulative that has decided that enough is enough. They said “Inflation has been close to the Riksbank’s target of 2% since the start of 2017, and the Riksbank assesses that conditions are good for inflation to remain close to the target going forward.” They still believe that NIRP worked, have not ruled out using it again and will stick to zero for a while however. I believe the only thing it worked to do, and successfully, was dramatically compress interest rates, their yield curve and the profits of their banks, the supposed transmission mechanism of the policy.