Markets are getting strange

A decade ago, negative interest rates would have been seen as being completely mad, says Merryn Somerset Webb. Today, they're viewed as normal.

It is getting seriously strange out there.A decade ago it would never have crossed even the most mad of monetary minds that the great credit bubble of the early 2000s would end with interest rates actually being negative. Today it's almost entirely normal. Just another tool in a central banker's box.

Negative rates are already par for the course in the eurozone (30% of bonds in issue there will cost you if you hold them to maturity), in Switzerland, and in Sweden, and late last week Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda announced that from now on any bank that wants to keep any new cash on deposit at his institution is going to have to pay 0.1% for the privilege. Japanese rates are now -0.1%.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.