At the end of January, Japan’s became the latest central bank to drop deposit rates into negative territory, joining the likes of the ECB, Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark. This now means that something like 25% of the world economy on a GDP basis is operating on a fee-for-deposit basis. What does this mean for collateralized financing markets? So far, not what the Japanese expected it to mean. The move was aimed at driving capital deposits away, into private markets, and at devaluing the Yen as a defense against the precipitous drop in the Yuan. Apart from a brief stock market uptick in the days following, none of this has occurred.
