From 2014 to 2016, central banks increasingly adopted negative interest rates in response to sliding inflation. At the time, economists and investors could reasonably wonder whether subzero monetary policy was the path of the future for the developed world. Despite all the discussion, though, it is telling that this year’s Covid-19 crisis—the greatest economic shock in modern history by many measures—hasn’t prompted any major monetary institution to adopt a new negative-rate policy. Nor have the parts of the world with existing...

Source: Wall Street Journal September 30, 2020 10:18 UTC