The World of ZIRP Zombies

Interest rates in the US, Europe and the UK were reduced to close to zero in the wake of the Lehman crisis nearly seven years ago.

Initially zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) was a temporary measure to counter the price deflation that immediately followed the crisis, but since then interest rates have been kept suppressed at the zero bound. It had been hoped that the stimulus of close-to-zero interest rates would also guarantee economic recovery. It has failed in this respect and the low bond yields that result have only encouraged the rapid expansion of government debt.

rates risk triggering a second financial crisis that could also undermine currencies, pushing up price inflation. While macroeconomic theories can be faulted on the basis of outcomes, there is little doubt the systemic threat from a trend of rising interest rates is very real.

On balance, it is a situation that calls for inaction justified by hope. After all, with the Fed funds rate at 0.25% and $2.6 trillion of commercial bank funds already on deposit at the Fed, could it be that even a small increase in the rate will just suck more deposit money out of the US banking system, leading to a contraction of bank lending?

Central bankers are beginning to see what it has been like for their colleagues in Japan, where for twenty-five years with zero interest rates nothing tried seems to work. Welcome to Keynes’s world of euthanized savers and state-sponsored funding. Welcome to the world of ZIRP zombies.

[1] Keynes: General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, Chapter 24 section 2.

[2] See Von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 349. (English translation, 1953 Yale University Press.)

Reprinted with permission from GoldMoney.