Thursday, March 3, 2016

Negative interest rates trend, could changes the peoples mindset about money

Negative interest rate becomes trending right now on financial system, maybe for the next period, as reported from John Mauldin business insider, If rates go negative, we should expect to see financial innovations that emulate cash in more convenient forms. This could be changing the mindset people about funding and money, One obvious candidate is a special-purpose bank that offers conventional checking accounts (for a fee) and pledges to hold no asset other than cash (which it immobilizes in a very large vault).

Checks written on accounts in a special-purpose bank would be tantamount to negotiable warehouse receipts on the bank’s cash. Special-purpose banks would probably not be viable for small accounts or if interest rates are only slightly below zero, say -25 or -50 basis points (because break-even account fees are likely to be larger), but might start to become attractive if rates go much lower than that.

Meanwhile, Ludwig von Mises fans will recognize that this approach is not far from the Austrian economics goal of 100% reserve banking. It isn’t quite there because the vault contains fiat currency instead of gold, but I think Mises would recognize it as a step in the right direction. (The fact that Fed economists see it only as an exotic theoretical possibility wouldn’t surprise him, either.)

The consequences of such banking would be more than theoretical. If enough people wanted to use these special-purpose banks, demand for physical cash would go through the roof.

There simply wouldn’t be enough to go around if it just sat in vaults instead of circulating. Furthermore, if the vaulted cash in these banks reduced deposits in normal loan-making banks, the whole banking system might grind to a halt.

Source : John Mauldin business insider, Ludwig von mises

No comments:

Post a Comment