Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by H8crilA 2086 days ago
Exactly, it sounds to me that the causation may very well run the other direction, if at all.

Low economic growth implies low interest rates, high indebtedness, high asset prices and extended asset duration[1]. Therefore it is so much more important to look at your contracts carefully, because they matter so much more.

If you don't see it then imagine what a true 0% (or around -1%, to account for risk premium) riskfree interest rate across the entire duration means. It means, for example, that it theoretically makes sense to level entire mountains just to create more farmland or to build slightly faster highways because it will pay back over hundreds of years. Imagine negotiating such deals!

[1] this is not just my opinion, but also the opinion of 2012 Jerome Powell; you can find it in FOMC transcripts from before he became the chairman of the Fed.
1 comments
hammock 2086 days ago
>it theoretically makes sense to level entire mountains just to create more farmland or to build slightly faster highways because it will pay back over hundreds of years

Is that not what we are doing, in the US and elsewhere? Creating massive debt, the proceeds from which are plowed into real estate development via cheap loans, infrastructure stimulus bills, etc.

link
H8crilA 2086 days ago
Absolutely, though of course it's not even close to leveling mountains yet.

It's much worse in some places than in the US. For example the Swiss 50 year bond is currently priced at -0.36%, and this is "high" given recent yields history. Switzerland is already buying nearly every financial asset it can with printed money, including US stocks, but the credit markets don't give a damn. Swiss mortgages have theoretically infinite duration (you never pay it back by design). Austria has some extremely low yielding 100 year bonds despite not having existed yet for 100 years (in the current form). The deflation is just too strong.

link
hammock 2086 days ago
We have been leveling mountains for a long time already. https://www.google.com/search?q=strip+mining+leveling+mounta...

And the reason deflation is bad is because we got hooked on debt long ago and wouldn't be able to pay the interest..

link