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Negative yielding debt is literally a waste of time. Money is worth less as you move into the future. Fiat is literally a black hole.



Which is by design, to encourage investments elsewhere. The rise of Bitcoin and the stock market are probably an indication that the policy worked. People indeed are willing to burn their money in crypto rather than keeping them in savings/bonds


There's an alternate timeline without ZIRP and Bitcoin is nothing more than a curiosity there.


I keep reading about how we need to discourage consumerism, wastefulness, mindless consumption. Recycle and reuse.

Yet fiat enthusiasts keep parroting that the linear and intentional destruction of value through inflation, in order to encourage further mindless consumption, is a good thing? What is so bad about a currency that maintains its value throughout time? This would allow someone to actually save, rather than be forced to buy some stupid widget they don't need, or become a part-time fund manager trying to decide between a series of risky assets. As it stands, simple savings accounts pay zero and lose money to inflation, so if you don't become a one-man hedge fund or pay someone else to become one for you, you just lose your money.


Every currency’s goal is to be stable in terms of value. The mechanics of achieving so are complicated though since you will need to exactly calibrate the supply of new money to match your economic activity. We are at the point where we don’t even agree what economic activity is lol.


Incorrect - central banks target inflation, such as 2%. The official goal is to lose 2% of value every year.


What percentage of assets are negative yielding?

They can’t all be negative in real terms.


All cash is, also any investment below inflation - so most bonds.


This motivates productive use of that capital. Deflationary currencies just guarantee the rich get richer as an axiom.


> This motivates productive use of that capital.

Nah. It motivates rational beings to spend that capital on anything at all, as fast as possible, because the alternative is a net loss of purchasing power.

Deflationary currencies on the contrary motivate actors to think before spending, because any spending has to be balanced with the future gains that won't come from holding it and seing it accumulate value over time.


The real solution exists somewhere in between an inflationary and deflationary currency. This is a balancing act.




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