Going Negative: What it Means for the Fed

Neil Irwin had an interesting NYT Upshot piece on the use of negative interest rates by central banks as a way of boosting demand. There are three points worth adding to this discussion.

First, the Fed has other tools to try to boost the economy. The obvious one is to explicitly target a long-term interest rate. For example, the Fed could say that it will push the 5-year Treasury note rate down to 1.0 percent. It would then buy enough 5-year notes to bring the rate down to this level.

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