The spectre of negative interest rates is looming over Anglo-Saxon markets.
Last month, the UK sold three-year debt at a negative yield for the first time. The Bank of England said the option of pushing benchmark interest rates below zero was under “active review”, as it also is in New Zealand. And in the US, the market is starting to price in this possibility from next year.
Conventional thinking is that negative policy rates — which are in place in the eurozone, Japan and elsewhere — are just a natural continuation of central banks’ vast bond-buying programmes. But this underestimates how financial intermediaries may respond to such a move and its impact on inflation expectations.