Here’s another one from the department of broken records. Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, has pushed its repo rate from -0.35 to -0.5. The bank’s executive board said the move would “provide support for inflation” and announced more bond buying. For real.
As Japan is to quantitative easing (QE), so Sweden is to negative rates and a cashless society. The use of negative rates in Sweden is worth watching because the Swedish economy has advanced towards “cashlessness” more than any other.
But not fast enough for some!
“We should move quickly to a cashless economy so that we could introduce negative rates well below 1%.” That comment – allegedly made by a policy insider at a closed session on fintech at the World Economic Forum in Davos – was reproduced in a presentation given by Morgan Stanley analyst Huw van Steenis.
By now it’s obvious what the people who run the world’s monetary system would like to do. The only question is whether they will be allowed to do it. And that raises a good question: who will stop them?
Category: Central Banks