James McAndrews: Negative nominal central bank policy rates – where is the lower bound? Remarks by Mr James McAndrews, Executive Vice President and Director of Research of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, 8 May 2015. *  *  *  The views expressed in this speech are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or of the Federal Reserve System. The Swiss National Bank (SNB), the European Central Bank (ECB), Danmarks Nationalbank (DNB), and the Swedish Riksbank recently have pushed short-term interest rates to levels below the “zero lower bound.” The current extent and depth of negative policy rates is unprecedented; previously only Denmark had a modestly negative policy rate in 2012 through 2014. The actions of the four central banks have led a number of commentators to ask, Is the concept of a zero lower bound on interest rates valid? If not, what might be the lower bound, if any, on nominal interest rates? Indeed, some economists have suggested that with changes to the monetary system, we could in fact eliminate the lower bound to interest rates altogether. I’ll first review the reasons given by the central banks for setting negative policy rates – in all cases, the negative rates were seen as a means of advancing the banks’ macroeconomic objectives in the current environment.
Such possible profit squeezes could also prompt financial institutions to take on inappropriately risky assets to earn an apparently positive  8  BIS central bankers’ speeches  return. These concerns are present to some extent at very low rates, but they are magnified at negative rates of interest, a point made by Ben Bernanke in his 2004 speech on the topic. 9 A special case in the United States concerns the 2a-7 money market mutual funds, which are more prevalent in the United States than in Europe. Money market mutual funds are institutions that offer a floating rate of interest to shareholders that is intended to maintain the value of a share in the fund equal to par, or very close to par, at all times. With negative interest rates, and in the absence of a sponsor that is willing to subsidize shareholders in the fund, such a financial institution would not be able to return a dollar invested today to a shareholder the next day. In such circumstances, the fund must disband, as it has “broken the buck.” Recent SEC reforms specify that prime institutional funds be offered only shares expressed as floating Net Asset Values in 2016, but retail and Treasury-only money funds will retain a fixed NAV share structure, and therefore will still be subject to this complication in an environment of negative nominal rates. 10 6. Signal of deflation  Another complication centers on the signaling effects I mentioned earlier.