Business

On Friday the Bank of Japan implemented Negative Interest Rate Policy, or NIRP.

It is the second Central Bank to do so. The European Central Bank or ECB first went to NIRP in June 2014.

Thus, between Japan and Europe, over 20% of the world’s GDP is being managed by a Central Bank with NIRP.

More importantly, TWO major currencies in the world are now at NIRP while the US Dollar is at 0.5%.

Why does this matter?

Because hundreds of billions of Dollars in capital will be fleeing Japan to come to the US.

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

This week the great tree of Apple finally stopped growing toward the sky. During its latest quarter, in fact, i-Pad sales were down 25%, Mac volume came in 4% lower and even the i-Phone barely breached the flat line.

As extensively discussed yesterday in the aftermath of the BOJ's stunning decision to cut rates to negative for the first time in history (a decision which it appears was taken due to Davos peer pressure, a desire to prop up stock markets and to punish Yen longs, and an inability to further boost QE), there will be consequences - some good, mostly bad.

Two weeks ago, Zero Hedge reported an exclusive story corroborated by at least two independent sources, in which we informed our readers that members of the Dallas Federal Reserve had met with bank lenders with distressed loan exposure to the US oil and gas sector and, after parsing through the complete bank books, had advised banks to i) not urge creditor counterparties into default, ii) urge asset sales instead, and iii) ultimately suspend mark to market in various instances.

With Citi's chief economist proclaiming "only helicopter money can save the world now," and the Bank of England pre-empting paradropping money concerns, it appears that Australia's largest investment bank's forecast that money-drops were 12-18 months away was too conservative.