Negative Yields – And Why They’re Unlikely to Happen in the U.S.

Imagine a world where lenders pay you to borrow money from them; debt service on mortgages is structured so you pay back less than the amount borrowed; bank deposits cost you rather than earn you money. This is becoming the new normal across a number of developed economies currently implementing Negative Interest Rate Policies (NIRP) in order to spur growth and stave off possible recessionary pressures. The paradigm shift ushered in by NIRP across the globe has recently grown considerably. An unprecedented growth of negative yielding debt has left many investors wondering if negative yields are coming to the United States, one of the last developed economies continuing to eschew negative rates altogether. Although we believe negative US yields are not probable, it’s certainly not an impossible scenario (the key word in the title of this article is “Unlikely”).