Something New Under The Sun: European Businesses Now Paid To Borrow Money

Nestlé is getting paid to borrow money. "Once upon a time, you actually had to pay lenders to borrow money. It was an archaic ritual called 'interest'... In fact, it's the opposite of how things work today, at least in Europe's brave, new, deflationary world. France, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany are all getting paid by investors—that is, bond yields are negative—to borrow for up to four, and sometimes six, years. Switzerland is even getting paid to borrow for ten years. That's never happened anywhere before. But it's not just governments that people are paying for the privilege of lending to. It's companies, too. Or at least one of them: Nestlé. Its €500 million debt that comes due in October 2016 became the first corporate bond of a year or longer to have a negative yield, after it got as low as -0.0081 percent on Tuesday." Matt O'Brien in The Washington Post