“The combination of power, optimism and abstract thinking makes powerful people more certain. The more cut-off they are from others, the more confident they are that they are right.” Margaret Heffernan, Willful Blindness "I think this is where the academics are kind of clashing with the practitioners. I think on paper negative rates make a lot of sense if you're running academic models, but in reality they make no sense. Having seven or eight trillion dollars of debt trading at negative rates, having thirty year JGB's trading at fifty basis points is absolutely ludicrous. This experiment that's going on we all know will end poorly at some point in time, I just don't know when that time is... I think that one of the fears that they have is a run on cash. If they told you and I that they're going to tax your deposits by a hundred basis points, well it's better to put it in a safe or under your mattress. And that's why you see a resurgence in gold. The more they move to negative rates, the more gold is gonna take off because there's no carrying cost." Kyle Bass, Hayman Capital
