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A comment on It’s Official: This Is Now the Longest Economic Expansion in US History.

Re:It’s Official: This Is Now the Longest Economic Expansion... by apo on Monday July 08, 2019 @10:27AM (#20382989)
Quantitative easing is a powerful drug. During the 2008 crisis, most observers didn't even seriously consider the possibility that the Fed could buy long-term treasuries and mortgage securities. Those who did vastly underestimated the scale on which the Fed would eventually do so.

But QE is also highly addictive. The next downturn will most likely take place within the next 18 months. It's going to catch a lot of dumb money flat-footed, and that means big declines in the stock market - something that has now become simply not acceptable politically.

There's one more piece of candy in the jar though: negative interest rates.

Where the Fed decides to go with short term rates isn't really that important anymore. Far more important is how it begins to lay the groundwork for negative rates.

Because negative interest rates will transform the grossly distorted world economy into something completely unrecognizable.

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Re:It’s Official: This Is Now the Longest Economic Expansion... by helen___keller on Monday July 08, 2019 @10:34AM (#20383050)
>negative interest rates will transform the grossly distorted world economy into something completely unrecognizable

Can you elaborate on this? I thought Japan had negative interest rates for quite a while

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Re:It’s Official: This Is Now the Longest Economic Expansion... by sdfsaf on Monday July 08, 2019 @01:36PM (#20384828)
And they've been economically dying for almost 30 years.
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Re:It’s Official: This Is Now the Longest Economic Expansion... by Descartes1 on Monday July 08, 2019 @10:38AM (#20383080)
Negative rates are nothing other than a complete failure of the financial system. If we go there it's the beginning of a very dark, very oppressive era. Crypto and metals will shoot the moon. And shadow economies will sprout under every rock.
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