There's a new career option in Denmark. It's one that sounds too good to be true: getting paid to borrow money to buy homes.

I have permission from Mr. Welsh to repost anything he writes after waiting at least a day or two from his original posting.

by Ian Welsh, Nov. 17, 2017

No, central banks aren’t screwing the economy up with their purchases:

Earlier this year the Federal Reserve committed itself to the rate hiking cycle.
The reasoning was that the Fed wanted to deflate the asset bubbles and keep down price inflation.

Just one week ago, the Bank of Japan promised not to use negative interest rates. Today the Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda broke that promise.

Imagine for a moment that some salesman offered you a deal.
They are willing to let you loan them money, and would only charge you a nominal fee plus a small rate of interest for the transaction.

In a sane world your answer would either be either, "Uh, no" or you would laugh in their face, depending on your mood at the time.
Pay to loan money?!? That's insane. Not just insane, illogical.

In a press conference last week, Fed Chair Janet Yellen was asked about negative interest rates. Yellen dismissed the possibility, but also said if "we found ourselves with a weak economy that needed additional stimulus, we would look at all of our available tools, and [a negative rate] would be something that we would evaluate in that kind of context."

The insanity of negative interest rates is one of the most under-reported, under-appreciated developments in recent days.
For instance, consider this.