Skip to main content

Do negative interest rates create jobs?

   Quantitative Easing (QE) by the Federal Reserve has a goal of increasing liquidity and the circulation of money and reducing interest rates. Negative real interest rates are used by Central Banks with the goal to stimulate economy by pressuring people to start a business so they can earn a yield. The problem is that marketing or finding customers is the hardest part of running a business. An investment advisor would not recommend buying a business simply because financing was attractive; instead they factor is demand for goods and services.

In many other countries loans are granted to businesses that are not creditworthy because it is a matter of government policy. These banks are called “policy” banks instead of real banks because they don’t operate with a constraint to loan only to credit worthy businesses. In Japan during their great real estate bubble of the 1980’s the banks would persuade businesses to borrow more than they needed with a promise to buy office buildings from them at predetermined appreciated prices. This is an example of negative interest rates creating an expansion of loans and the money supply. But that behavior is not allowed in the U.S. banking system.
   Thus offering loans at negative real rates will only have a minimal impact on the economy in terms of creating more growth.
 It may be true that when yields are too low that investors will invest in junk bonds which are issued by lending company that seeks to find extra borrowers by lending too much to high risk borrowers. But those businesses would be a non-bank shadow bank type of lender. Their financing is more constrained and unreliable, so if they get into trouble their access to funds gets shut of quickly. These lenders are only interested in lending at high rates. So the impact of negative real rates makes them more willing to lend yet they only want to lend at high rates. This negates much of the benefit of artificially low rates.
  Very low interest rates could induce more investor to become landlords. This would result in a surplus of rental properties, thus cutting the market value of rents, since there is a finite supply of tenants. As rents were cut then the owners would find their leveraged investments didn’t produce the projected profit and then real estate prices would go down.
Ref
http://mayflowercapital.com/do-negative-interest-rates-create-jobs/

About the author:
http://mayflowercapital.com/who-we-are/don-martin-financial-advisor/

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

LIC Buys Double as Prices Dive - 10 Aug 2011

http://licreddy.com/Content/information/insurancenews_details.asp?NewsCode=4872 LIC Buys Double as Prices Dive 10-Aug-2011 Life Insurance Corp of India, the government's institution of choice to stabilise the stock market whenever it gets wobbly, has more than doubled stock purchases in the past three days as the global debt worry-triggered selloff made valuations attractive. LIC, the country's biggest investor with stakes in L&T, Axis Bank and Grasim, will raise its secondary market purchases this fiscal as IPOs dry up with promoters not keen to sell shares at lower valuations. "We have been buying in the past few days,'' said a LIC executive involved in decisionmaking. "With the market correcting and not many public issues coming up, we would be investing more in secondary market," said the person who did not want to be identified. LIC to Invest . 50k Cr More LIC, which had been buying stocks for an average of . 120 crore in the first four...

Best IELTS and English language training institutions in Hyderabad

IELTS stands for International English Language Testing System. As the name implies it is basically an English test for testing the proficiency of the language in an individual.  Training for IELTS can be taken to pass the IELTS exam or to develop good english language skills. I am giving the training institute addresses for Hyderabad. The test system is jointly managed by the British Council,IDP education ltd and University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations and more than 1 million candidates are taking the exam all over the world. The test has two versions : 1. Academic 2. General training Academic  version is for people who plan to continue their higher education by enrolling in universities in countries like US,UK,Australia,Canada,New Zealand etc.The academic institutions in these countries consider the IELTS score as a criteria for the admission process. General training is mostly for immigration purposes in countries like Australia,New Zealand,Canada etc. It may ...

How to use home loans most effectively for tax benefits

1) Deduction on interest: If you are paying EMIs for a home loan you took to buy a house, the interest component in the EMI can be claimed as deduction. You must be both an owner and a co-borrower (in the loan) to claim tax benefits. This deduction can be claimed starting the year in which the construction of the house is completed. Suppose the construction of your house was completed on August 30, 2014, you can claim deduction for interest for the entire 12 months in financial year 2014-15. So every year a maximum of Rs. 2 lakh can be claimed for a house that you use for your own residence. If your house is rented, the entire interest for the year can be claimed as deduction. The interest payments for the year shall result in a loss under the head 'income from house property'. This loss can be adjusted against in the same year against other heads of income in your income tax return including salary. Therefore, it reduces your total taxable income and the tax you pay thereon. A...