In late January, we asked "who will offer the first negative rate mortgage?"
Who will offer the first negative rate mortgage
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 30, 2015
We didn't have to wait long before Denmark's Nordea Credit unleashed this idiocy. And now two banks in Belgium have followed suit, paying instead of charging interest on mortgages to a handful of customers.
Belgium. Iraq. Pakistan.
Each of those countries was rocked by at least one horrific suicide blast last week. In Belgium, it was a crowded airport and metro. In Iraq, a soccer field. In Pakistan, a park popular with women and children.
The combined death toll from those attacks alone: more than 130.
Turkish President Erdogan has bragged about sending one of the terrorist bombers to Belgium, blaming authorities in Europe for failing to realise he was dangerous. Bakraoui was arrested in Turkey in 2015 and upon realising that he was a terrorist, rather than jail him as Erdogan does with journalists and personal detractors, the Turkish leader chose to send him to Belgium instead.
Hours after brothers Khalid and Ibrahim El-Bakraoui and two other men (one of whom may or may not have been bombmaker Najim Laachraoui) detonated explosives-laden vests and luggage at the Brussels airport and metro murdering nearly two dozen people and wounding scores more, we were alarmed but not entirely surprised to see Belgium evacuate the Tihange nuclear power plant.