Is it time to make negative interest rates a standard part of the central banker’s tool kit? A surprisingly large number of economists seem to think so. Even before they finally decide that the time is right for liftoff, central bankers in the U.S. and the U.K. have been making it clear that in this cycle, their key policy rates will rise only gradually, and peak at levels well below those that were considered normal before the financial crisis. But what happens if the U.S. and U.K. economies enter a sharp downturn in the next few years? That’s not an unlikely turn of events, since in both cases the current economic ... (full story)