Ben Moshinsky
Business Insider
February 29, 2016
There’s one hurdle to using negative interest rates to get people to stop saving and start spending – cash.
If interest rates on retail deposits went negative and people were charged for keeping money in a bank, there would be nothing to stop them taking it all out in cash and hiding it under their bed.
This would scupper a central bank’s plans to stimulate the economy with negative rates, and has prompted a debate over whether or not to ban cash, or at least create incentives to ditch it in favour of a digital-only economy.
It’s already going that way in Sweden, which has such low rates that people are hiding their cash in microwaves.
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