Trickle-down theory once again proven wrong

[living sounds]

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/10/07/us/politics/ap-us-budget-deficit.html?searchResultPosition=6

“The $984 billion deficit tally for 2019 came in more than $200 billion more than last year’s, despite very low unemployment and continuing economic growth.”

Actual economists knew supply-side economics to be "voodoo-economics" 40 years ago, but it's still being applied.

 

[pucho812]

explain how this proves any economic theory wrong? My government has been running at a deficit for decades. nothing new or shocking. 

 

[living sounds]

explain how this proves any economic theory wrong? My government has been running at a deficit for decades. nothing new or shocking.

They always tell the fairytale of tax cuts paying for themselves. Now the rich in the US pay a lower percentage than everyone else:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/06/opinion/income-tax-rate-wealthy.html

And the deficit goes through the roof.

Reality is once again catching up.

 

[pucho812]

But the Deficit has always gone through the roof.

Here watch this, it's a good no partisan look at the mater of taxes and my government.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9XMNV2B18c

 

[living sounds]

But the Deficit has always gone through the roof.

Actually not. In the postwar period the US got rid of most of the deficit it had build up after the Great Depression and WW2. And at the same time build a middle class people are still nostalgic about.

The deficit rose again with Reagan's introduction of trickle down economics and increased military spending. It then fell again during Bill Clintons administration. Then Bush pushed it up again with tax cuts and wars, and then Obama had to deal with the Great Recession, which increased the deficit massively, as it did in every other major economy.

 

[JohnRoberts]

: :

Now that you have your economist hat on how do you feel about "negative" long term interest rates? (Like -0.65%)

Do you want a serious discussion about budgets and economics or just tired political talking points? 

I have long complained about our increasing sovereign debt. Annual budget deficits require a more complex analysis where GDP growth is a mitigating factor.

That said when the opposition declines to ratify approved trade deals, that can slow GDP growth, with bad consequences for everybody. Of course the opposition party does not want a strong economy heading into an election.

They wouldn't intentionally tank the economy would they? 

JR

 

[dogears]

Yes, let's let Germany teach us economics. GDP per capita makes it poorer per person than all but 19 of the US states - less than Oklahoma, for example.

About 35% less than the GDP per capita of the US. How do they manage it? Maybe we can follow in their footsteps.

 

[Matador]

Yes, let's let Germany teach us economics. GDP per capita makes it poorer per person than all but 19 of the US states - less than Oklahoma, for example.

About 35% less than the GDP per capita of the US. How do they manage it? Maybe we can follow in their footsteps.

What an odd and specific comparison to levy: by this logic, any place with a lower average wage is immediately inferior to one with a higher wage.

I could easily list 10 metrics where Germany beats the pants off the US, including health care costs, employee training, higher education costs, cost of living in major cities, size and capabilities of the social safety net.

Perhaps the answer is more complicated than mere GDP per capita?

 

[dogears]

What an odd and specific comparison to levy: by this logic, any place with a lower average wage is immediately inferior to one with a higher wage.

I could easily list 10 metrics where Germany beats the pants off the US, including health care costs, employee training, higher education costs, cost of living in major cities, size and capabilities of the social safety net.

Perhaps the answer is more complicated than mere GDP per capita?

GDP is not wages. GDP is consumer spending, investment, and public spending. It very much covers everything you described. It is the sum total of economic output. For the sake of discussion, if it is economically more efficient to spend more money training workers, one would expect that to correlate positively with per capita GDP.

Put another way... including government spending which ultimately comes from the private sector (even public bonds are purchased with private dollars, right?) person in Oklahoma produces more economic output than each person in Germany. If all of the things you mentioned are objectively better economically, it would show in GDP.

If you *really* want an eye opener, adjust GDP with purchasing power parity. That’ll reveal the social safety net things you’re talking about. It won’t go well for our European counterparts, though.

I really get tired of the healthcare costs arguments. Healthcare costs and healthcare spending are used interchangeably by people but they shouldn’t be. The US spends more on healthcare because healthcare spending correlates almost exactly with disposable income metrics such as AIC. In other words richer nations spend more on healthcare than poorer ones do because they have the money to do so.

That’s not the same thing as healthcare costs, not at all. Americans spend more on healthcare, absolutely. They also spend more on electronics and a whole lot of other discretionary items. Would we say electronics costs are too high in America because of that?

Here’s probably more than you’re interested in reading on the topic. 

https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2018/11/19/why-everything-you-know-about-healthcare-is-wrong-in-one-million-charts-a-response-to-noah-smith/

 

[Matador]

EDIT: nevermind.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

GDP is not wages.

Indeed. Just as well, wages are not purchasing power. A typical US family spends what in education and health? A much greater percentage of raw income than most European countries, not because education or health services are less good in Europe, but education is paid by our taxes. I have to exclude the UK.

  GDP is consumer spending, investment, and public spending.

Including defence, police, ... These cannot be seriously accounted as positive welfare factors. They are inevitable, but in an ideal society, the less money spent on these the better.

  For the sake of discussion, if it is economically more efficient to spend more money training workers, one would expect that to correlate positively with per capita GDP.

Isn't it pretty much the case in Japan, Korea, Sweden...?

If you *really* want an eye opener, adjust GDP with purchasing power parity. That’ll reveal the social safety net things you’re talking about. It won’t go well for our European counterparts, though.

How do you know that? My friends don't have to spend a half-million $ to send their kids to school and I pay nothing for my lifetime diabetes/blood pressure situation (and I don't have a private health insurance). Please don't judge other countries only by the things you consider negative. There are good things and bad things in every country; they are the result of interactive adjustments between aspirations and resources. Look at what's good in other countries and try to figure out if there is an opportunity to improve yours. Your paradigm is dictated by history, tradition, social environment, please recognize the fact that other people have a different one.

The US spends more on healthcare because healthcare spending correlates almost exactly with disposable income metrics such as AIC. In other words richer nations spend more on healthcare than poorer ones do because they have the money to do so.

My friend in NYC is treated for lung cancer; her treatment costs $35 000 every 3 week. In France the cost would be about one tenth, because the state controls prices.

 

[ruffrecords]

Indeed. Just as well, wages are not purchasing power. A typical US family spends what in education and health? A much greater percentage of raw income than most European countries, not because education or health services are less good in Europe, but education is paid by our taxes. I have to exclude the UK.

I don't understand why t=you exclude the UK. Our education and healthcare is also paid out of taxes.

Cheers

Ian

 

[living sounds]

I find the reflexive reaction of understanding my post as an attack on a (your) country interesting.

My aim was the ideological folly that as for a long time permeated economic policy throughout the world. Yes, it originated in the US and finds its most zealous supporters there. But it was at least partly adopted in many other countries, with the same detrimental effects.

Negative interest rates, quantative easing etc. are a massive problem. Businesses that should have long failed are given a lifeline (inefficiency) and ordinary people (who keep their money at a bank) loose wealth. I don't see how this can work long-term.

The correct feedback mechanism is adequate progressive taxation. And regulation. Our current predicament was ultimately caused by neoliberal policies of deregulation and lowering taxes on the wealthier part of society.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

I don't understand why t=you exclude the UK. Our education and healthcare is also paid out of taxes.

Cheers

Ian

Is it? I know about healthcare, I was referring to education. I was taught a long time ago that "public" schools were expensive. You know better'n me.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I find the reflexive reaction of understanding my post as an attack on a (your) country interesting.

I find arguing about what you think other people think a waste of time and effort.

My aim was the ideological folly that as for a long time permeated economic policy throughout the world. Yes, it originated in the US and finds its most zealous supporters there. But it was at least partly adopted in many other countries, with the same detrimental effects.

As I have suggested before economics is not a hard science, perhaps because of the difficulty isolating phenomenon to remove conflating effects.

As I have also shared before world poverty has been shrinking for years (a good thing IMO). This is mostly a result of expanded world trade, improved work opportunities, rights(?), etc...    Workers in the west perceive the transfer of jobs/wealth globally as their personal loss, which it superficially is, but dragging more of the world out of poverty is worthwhile. 

This is low hanging fruit for divisive politicians to exploit.

Negative interest rates, quantative easing etc. are a massive problem. Businesses that should have long failed are given a lifeline (inefficiency) and ordinary people (who keep their money at a bank) loose wealth. I don't see how this can work long-term.

As the old saying goes when the tide finally goes back out we will see who isn't wearing swim trunks.  8)

The latest economic market distortion I am seeing is in the IPO (stock) market... Non-public venture investment groups have inflated the valuation of these private unicorn companies, far beyond their actual value. Their payday comes when the companies go public and the dumb public investors bails them out...  The market figures everything out eventually given enough time, and a number of recent IPOs have started to reflect the reality of being unprofitable with dubious future business plans.  Of course there are distortions almost every where we look caused by the too easy money for too long.

The public has adopted a "sky is falling" mentality about market indicators suggesting a recession is due (maybe a year off). This is no doubt caused by the short term memory of 2007/8 that we still have not fully recovered from or unwound the extraordinary measures. Typical mild recessions are healthy to remove dead wood (weak businesses) from the economy, keeping the dead wood around will eventually reveal untoward (bad) unintended consequences.

The correct feedback mechanism is adequate progressive taxation. And regulation. Our current predicament was ultimately caused by neoliberal policies of deregulation and lowering taxes on the wealthier part of society.

We already have progressive taxation, and IMO too much regulation. Our new crop of socialist politicians have figured out that they do not need to seize the private means of production if they can control it with government over-regulation, while scraping off more tax and penalty revenue to waste as they want.
---
I recently shared a suggestion elsewhere on social media, about my new plan to raise taxes. Let's tax the hell out of all the wealthy millionaires in congress who acquired that much wealth since taking office, while working for modest government employee wages. In our past history already wealthy people served in congress as a public service, now it is vehicle for career politicians to accumulate wealth. 

JR

 

[dogears]

Indeed. Just as well, wages are not purchasing power. A typical US family spends what in education and health? A much greater percentage of raw income than most European countries, not because education or health services are less good in Europe, but education is paid by our taxes. I have to exclude the UK.

This is a bit off the rails, I suppose, but it is interesting enough. The reason I was talking about GDP is because GDP is the right tool to measure production on a territorial level. I was being a bit snarky, because the OP doesn't really make any sense. There is not necessarily a correlation between deficit and tax cuts - you should look at revenue and tax cuts. But tax revenues will increase from 2018 to 2019 by an estimated 3.3%. So in a simple way the tax cuts absolutely did not adversely affect the deficit.

But, I assumed the OP was suggesting we shouldn't follow the economic practices of the US and instead follow the economic practices of (pick whatever place you like). I chose Germany because OP is German, and because they're the largest and arguably the strongest ecnomy in the EU. I used GDP per capita because it is the appropriate metric of aggregate economic efficiency in a territory. It is not, as you note, indicative of individual prosperity.  Given that, why should the US take economic advice from a nation who is objectively less economically efficient in every national metric?

There's no real quantitative answer to that, so the typical response is to move the goalposts from economic efficiency to individual metrics. That's fine, but it is a substantially different topic from evaluation of national economics.

As for your questions.
How much does a typical US family spend in education?
Depends on what you mean. Education for children is covered by state and local taxes. In my state public schools (age 5-18) and small local colleges are funded out of local property taxes (we don't have a state income tax).  The portion of my property tax that pays for these - which have no additional tuition cost - is 1.64% of the assessed value of my house every year. A typical house in my area is valued at around $250k, and of course people who rent pay this tax indirectly through their landlords. So let's say a family in a typical house pays around $4100 per year, in perpetuity, for education. You pay this whether you have children or not, from every property, every year. Of course, this is "free" just like yours is.

Universities are funded by a combination of student tuition, direct state subsidies for residents, and trusts - for example, the university I went to has a significant share of a public fund set up specifically for education relating to oil and gas revenues in the state.  The university I went to costs $11,036 per year for residents and $31,214 for non-residents, reflecting the subsidies I mentioned. There are, of course, scholarships and grants available both on the basis of merit (good grades, particular skills, whatever) and on the basis of financial need - schools, charities, state and federally funded. So, the average family directly pays $44,144 per child for education from kindergarten through university, if their kid goes to university, plus $4,100 a year "flat". I have no idea what your tax burden for education is, but I'd be interested to know how it compares?

Including defence, police, ... These cannot be seriously accounted as positive welfare factors. They are inevitable, but in an ideal society, the less money spent on these the better.

Well, "positive welfare factors" aren't in any way at all related to whether trickle-down economics is a valid theory, or whether two economies operating under possibly different economic systems are better or worse.

I will say, though, that the fact that the US directly subsidizes the defense spending of the entire world, and particularly NATO (67% of the total), certainly is a "positive welfare factor" and absolutely contributes directly to any national budget. It's super convenient in an ideal society to have someone else pay for your defense.

Isn't it pretty much the case in Japan, Korea, Sweden...?

I don't know. How would you like to evaluate whether this is effective or not?  Objectively speaking, in a market economy if it is advantageous to provide training workers, companies will do so in order to gain a competitive advantage over others. I don't see why this requires any public intervention to take place.

But even so, for the sake of argument let's assume that the aggregate effect is correlated into GDP.
Japan GDP p.c.: $38,428
S. Korea GDP p.c.: $29,742
Sweden GDP p.c.: $53,442
US GDP p.c.: $59,531

What are we measuring, and what are we trying to learn?

How do you know that? My friends don't have to spend a half-million $ to send their kids to school and I pay nothing for my lifetime diabetes/blood pressure situation (and I don't have a private health insurance). Please don't judge other countries only by the things you consider negative.

Well, as I've shown you, anyone paying $500,000 to send a child to school is doing so out of their own choice. It would be interesting to compare the amount each person (whether or not they have a child) spends in taxes over their life in the US system vs wherever you are from.

And you don't pay "nothing" for your medical care. You pay taxes for it, every year, and everyone around you pays for your medicine. Indirect or direct, the cost still exists.  It would be similarly enlightening to look at healthcare spending, although that is quite difficult as it would have to adjust for quality of care and a fixed service offering. As that link I posted earlier shows, some parts of healthcare spending are more akin to luxury than necessity - people spend more when the have more discretionary income, and that seems to be a global truism. Please note I am not advocating for anyone to follow the US healthcare model.
It's a total nightmare, a maze of perverse incentives, waste, fraud, and market distortions.

I can share by way of anecdote how much it costs my family. The total cost for the insurance plan is around $18,000 per year, which covers my whole family. I pay around $5000 of this - my employer carries the rest as a benefit. If you're an individual with no family, the same plan is around $6000 total, $1000 paid by employee.

By way of counter example, German spending is $4,500 per capita. German workers pay 8% of their gross income which is matched by their employers to s sickness fund, don't they? That works out to be much more than the situation I outlined above. So what's "free" and what isn't? I'm not sure there's anything to be learned here - the situation is very complicated  - but I'm also not sure we can stop here and say one is better or worse based solely on personal cost.

There are good things and bad things in every country; they are the result of interactive adjustments between aspirations and resources. Look at what's good in other countries and try to figure out if there is an opportunity to improve yours. Your paradigm is dictated by history, tradition, social environment, please recognize the fact that other people have a different one.

I've been fortunate enough in my life to travel and work in 25 different countries. I've worked for US, UK, Swiss, and Japanese corporations. I'm a first generation American -- hardly making snap judgments on here about inferiority of other countries. I don't have any quibble with other nations. What does annoy me is the tendency by many other nations to try to dictate to the US what we should and should not do, wag the finger. I think, rightly, people get upset when the US dictates to others, but they have no qualms about injecting opinions about our affairs.

I have opinions about Germany's economic system. I have strong opinions about their programs for power - they're wrecking their own economy with them. But I don't lecture Germans on it. It's their money, their people. They do what they want.

My friend in NYC is treated for lung cancer; her treatment costs $35 000 every 3 week. In France the cost would be about one tenth, because the state controls prices.

Do go read the article I linked earlier.

The advocacy for price control is kind of baffling, to be honest. If there's anything we know, economically, it is that price controls are absolutely ineffective. They simply don't work. They never have, they never will. Price is the universal language of the world - it is the most efficient means of communicating an unknowable wealth of information. The price of something tells you everything from the cost of the raw materials, the cost of financing and capital to produce the good, the profit expectations of the seller, the regulatory environment which the product is produced and sold, and the aggregate demand for the product.

If price controls are good for cancer treatments,  why shouldn't they be good for food costs as well? And if for food, why not for housing? And if for food, and housing, why not for farming, timber, wire production, carpentry and electrician and farm labor? And if for those, why not for all of the other ancillary industries, for the entire economy?

This is not an argument for a complete lack of regulation or ignorance of some kind of social hierarchy or competing concerns. But the truth is there is a cost for that cancer treatment. There is a profit motive for someone to invent the procedure, or the drug. There is a profit motive for someone to perform the treatment - the doctors, nurses, etc. If that profit motive isn't met, the treatment simply won't be available at all, at any price. If that price is fixed but subsidized by the state, then we can't really compare the two flatly on a cost basis, but instead must consider who bears the cost. Which is a worthy discussion in and of itself.

 

[dogears]

The latest economic market distortion I am seeing is in the IPO (stock) market... Non-public venture investment groups have inflated the valuation of these private unicorn companies, far beyond their actual value. Their payday comes when the companies go public and the dumb public investors bails them out...  The market figures everything out eventually given enough time, and a number of recent IPOs have started to reflect the reality of being unprofitable with dubious future business plans.  Of course there are distortions almost every where we look caused by the too easy money for too long.

Have you seen the documentary "The China Hustle"? Talks about an aspect of this.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

This is a bit off the rails, I suppose, but it is interesting enough. The reason I was talking about GDP is because GDP is the right tool to measure production on a territorial level. I was being a bit snarky, because the OP doesn't really make any sense. There is not necessarily a correlation between deficit and tax cuts - you should look at revenue and tax cuts. But tax revenues will increase from 2018 to 2019 by an estimated 3.3%. So in a simple way the tax cuts absolutely did not adversely affect the deficit.

But, I assumed the OP was suggesting we shouldn't follow the economic practices of the US and instead follow the economic practices of (pick whatever place you like). I chose Germany because OP is German, and because they're the largest and arguably the strongest ecnomy in the EU. I used GDP per capita because it is the appropriate metric of aggregate economic efficiency in a territory. It is not, as you note, indicative of individual prosperity.  Given that, why should the US take economic advice from a nation who is objectively less economically efficient in every national metric?

There's no real quantitative answer to that, so the typical response is to move the goalposts from economic efficiency to individual metrics. That's fine, but it is a substantially different topic from evaluation of national economics.

As for your questions.
How much does a typical US family spend in education?
Depends on what you mean. Education for children is covered by state and local taxes. In my state public schools (age 5-18) and small local colleges are funded out of local property taxes (we don't have a state income tax).  The portion of my property tax that pays for these - which have no additional tuition cost - is 1.64% of the assessed value of my house every year. A typical house in my area is valued at around $250k, and of course people who rent pay this tax indirectly through their landlords. So let's say a family in a typical house pays around $4100 per year, in perpetuity, for education. You pay this whether you have children or not, from every property, every year. Of course, this is "free" just like yours is.

Universities are funded by a combination of student tuition, direct state subsidies for residents, and trusts - for example, the university I went to has a significant share of a public fund set up specifically for education relating to oil and gas revenues in the state.  The university I went to costs $11,036 per year for residents and $31,214 for non-residents, reflecting the subsidies I mentioned. There are, of course, scholarships and grants available both on the basis of merit (good grades, particular skills, whatever) and on the basis of financial need - schools, charities, state and federally funded. So, the average family directly pays $44,144 per child for education from kindergarten through university, if their kid goes to university, plus $4,100 a year "flat". I have no idea what your tax burden for education is, but I'd be interested to know how it compares?Well, "positive welfare factors" aren't in any way at all related to whether trickle-down economics is a valid theory, or whether two economies operating under possibly different economic systems are better or worse.

I will say, though, that the fact that the US directly subsidizes the defense spending of the entire world, and particularly NATO (67% of the total), certainly is a "positive welfare factor" and absolutely contributes directly to any national budget. It's super convenient in an ideal society to have someone else pay for your defense.

I don't know. How would you like to evaluate whether this is effective or not?  Objectively speaking, in a market economy if it is advantageous to provide training workers, companies will do so in order to gain a competitive advantage over others. I don't see why this requires any public intervention to take place.

But even so, for the sake of argument let's assume that the aggregate effect is correlated into GDP.
Japan GDP p.c.: $38,428
S. Korea GDP p.c.: $29,742
Sweden GDP p.c.: $53,442
US GDP p.c.: $59,531

What are we measuring, and what are we trying to learn?
Well, as I've shown you, anyone paying $500,000 to send a child to school is doing so out of their own choice. It would be interesting to compare the amount each person (whether or not they have a child) spends in taxes over their life in the US system vs wherever you are from.

And you don't pay "nothing" for your medical care. You pay taxes for it, every year, and everyone around you pays for your medicine. Indirect or direct, the cost still exists.  It would be similarly enlightening to look at healthcare spending, although that is quite difficult as it would have to adjust for quality of care and a fixed service offering. As that link I posted earlier shows, some parts of healthcare spending are more akin to luxury than necessity - people spend more when the have more discretionary income, and that seems to be a global truism. Please note I am not advocating for anyone to follow the US healthcare model.
It's a total nightmare, a maze of perverse incentives, waste, fraud, and market distortions.

I can share by way of anecdote how much it costs my family. The total cost for the insurance plan is around $18,000 per year, which covers my whole family. I pay around $5000 of this - my employer carries the rest as a benefit. If you're an individual with no family, the same plan is around $6000 total, $1000 paid by employee.

By way of counter example, German spending is $4,500 per capita. German workers pay 8% of their gross income which is matched by their employers to s sickness fund, don't they? That works out to be much more than the situation I outlined above. So what's "free" and what isn't? I'm not sure there's anything to be learned here - the situation is very complicated  - but I'm also not sure we can stop here and say one is better or worse based solely on personal cost.
I've been fortunate enough in my life to travel and work in 25 different countries. I've worked for US, UK, Swiss, and Japanese corporations. I'm a first generation American -- hardly making snap judgments on here about inferiority of other countries. I don't have any quibble with other nations. What does annoy me is the tendency by many other nations to try to dictate to the US what we should and should not do, wag the finger. I think, rightly, people get upset when the US dictates to others, but they have no qualms about injecting opinions about our affairs.

I have opinions about Germany's economic system. I have strong opinions about their programs for power - they're wrecking their own economy with them. But I don't lecture Germans on it. It's their money, their people. They do what they want.
Do go read the article I linked earlier.

The advocacy for price control is kind of baffling, to be honest. If there's anything we know, economically, it is that price controls are absolutely ineffective. They simply don't work. They never have, they never will. Price is the universal language of the world - it is the most efficient means of communicating an unknowable wealth of information. The price of something tells you everything from the cost of the raw materials, the cost of financing and capital to produce the good, the profit expectations of the seller, the regulatory environment which the product is produced and sold, and the aggregate demand for the product.

If price controls are good for cancer treatments,  why shouldn't they be good for food costs as well? And if for food, why not for housing? And if for food, and housing, why not for farming, timber, wire production, carpentry and electrician and farm labor? And if for those, why not for all of the other ancillary industries, for the entire economy?

This is not an argument for a complete lack of regulation or ignorance of some kind of social hierarchy or competing concerns. But the truth is there is a cost for that cancer treatment. There is a profit motive for someone to invent the procedure, or the drug. There is a profit motive for someone to perform the treatment - the doctors, nurses, etc. If that profit motive isn't met, the treatment simply won't be available at all, at any price. If that price is fixed but subsidized by the state, then we can't really compare the two flatly on a cost basis, but instead must consider who bears the cost. Which is a worthy discussion in and of itself.

All you write here makes much more sense than your first post, that was, admit it, a tad elementary.

 

[living sounds]

As I have suggested before economics is not a hard science, perhaps because of the difficulty isolating phenomenon to remove conflating effects.

Not as hard as physics, and much more susceptible to special interest driven manipulation. However, it is pretty clear by now that suppy-side economics were and are a scam, a transparent atempt by the wealthy to roll back the New Deal policies that build the middle class and kept them at a reasonable level.

[quote author=JohnRoberts]
The public has adopted a "sky is falling" mentality about market indicators suggesting a recession is due (maybe a year off). This is no doubt caused by the short term memory of 2007/8 that we still have not fully recovered from or unwound the extraordinary measures.
[/quote]

It's not only the public but also economists. The problem with the next recession is that the usual instrumentarium governments had (lowering rates) isn't at their disposal, at least here in Europe. We're not in a normal situation at the end of a growth cycle. For the Eurozone the sky could actually fall, with the printing press being the only remaining option and as a result massive inflation and a collossal depression. Banks cannot survive on negative interest rates forever, the fear ist that they eventuelly move into the red, start to burn equity and enter a viscious cycle that ends with bankcruptcy. The only way to save them then will be to print lot's and lot's of money...

 

[dogears]

All you write here makes much more sense than your first post, that was, admit it, a tad elementary.

First post met the level of the original post, the last one met the level of yours