Bitcoin Forum

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/norway-cuts-rates-and-signals-more-easing-ahead-amid-oil-plunge

No surprise there, they've been hit by the oil price and are trying to stimulate the rest of their economy because thy don't really want to dip into their sovereign oil fund. (The Saudis have been dipping into their sovereign fund to compensate for low oil prices, and now 20% of it has gone).

Norway is getting more and more affected by the depressing impact of the low oil price to their economy. Further, the politics of other central banks like FED or ECD are contra productive for stable countries like Norway. I guess we will see more interest decreases in Norway in the next months.

Lowering interest rates by national banks are common nowadays. It is hardly surprising that Norway do it now.
Time will tell if that move will speed up their economy. But at least they don't have negative interest rates as some other countries yet.

Governments are using interest rates hikes to punish it's citizens for poor debt behaviour. The more people make use of debt to pay for things, the higher the interest rise. On the other hand, they

punish people saving their money too... This kind of manipulation becomes normal after a while and people accept it as the norm. Bitcoin has none of these problems... it's purely based on supply and

demand. The more you save/hoard the higher the price goes and that is the purest reward you can give someone. The banking system is failing one % at a time....  ::)

Wow, Norway still had positive rates!  Now that they have got to 0.2%, they can go down to zero before starting their attack on Cash.
It is a joke situation nowadays, rates were cut to near zero, that didn't work, so they want to cut more.  Isn't that a sign of insanity?

I wonder how low they can go before they lose control? -5%? When would you take every last cent out of your bank?

I'm guessing that unless we do hit something more than just a few fractions of a percent in the negative, the average person won't really care.  We already get hit with overdraft fees anyway for letting them hold onto our money, what's a couple more percent out of it.

I wonder if you could use a safe deposit box to hold cash in as a workaround it things got too bad...

The money in the safe deposit box will devaluate until it's value is the same as a roll of toilet paper. The only way now to protect the value, will be to buy physical goods or commodities you can trade or sell. In a world economic crisis situation, people would value a pack of cigarettes more than a roll of money. The images of people pushing wheelbarrows of money around to buy a loaf of bread comes to mind. You could buy gold and silver, but the question will be if there will be a market for that expensive items. ^hmmmmmm^ < This is the worst case scenario >

It is a better step, with that more people will be encourage to start their business with loans, and they will find opportunities at cheap rate to improve their lifestyle. With high interest rate no one try to rely on it and the time passes without any benefit to them.

someone posted here the other day about western governments talking about negative interest rates, even worse, i think financial meltdown is looming again

Their rate is still higher than USA.
They still can cut rate twice, while USA can only cut once. I think negative rate will be good to Bitcoin price. Negative rate takes away one of the major advantage fiat over Bitcoin, fiat is capable of getting some small interest from bank, while no bank pays Bitcoin yet.

The negative interest rate will also depress the price of the fiat, that is also good for the value of bitcoin.

That's good for their economy as the are badly hit by the low oil price. But being a small country, their rate cut will not be able to make any impact on the world economy.

Also I think bitcoin price will also remain unaffected by this matter. The good thing is, Norway still doesn't have negative interest rate.

I think over the coming months we are going to see this in most countries around the world and even more negative rates.

The negative interest rate will make the currency less valuable. So the bitcoin will be more valuable relatively.

This is not exactly true according to my information. In Japan government and banks introduced negative interest rates.
And still Japanese Yen is 3rd most tradable currency in the world despite very low/negative interest rates.

Heh - since you ask - about 16 years ago. I may have been a bit premature.              ;)

Seriously, I now have a better understanding of the value of Bill Bonner's quip that "just because something is inevitable does not mean it is imminent".

These things tend to unfold in very slow motion for a long time, followed by a sudden upheaval. It is what it is - choose wisely.

Tax cuts could have significantly greater economic growth potential than the tiny rate changes central banks utilize in an effort to lure investors into spending.

In terms of history, north american economic growth was as high as 10% prior to 1913 when the income tax was legislated. After 1913 when the rich paid a 6% income tax (everyone else paid 1%) there could be a strong correlation between higher taxes and decreased growth of economy.

These days, the media only looks at income taxes. The real tax rate, what average percentage of income goes towards road taxes, gas taxes, alcohol excise taxes, telecommunications taxes and the massive assortment of "death by a thousand cuts" taxes which were introduced over the years. That could be an issue that could be addressed with the long term effect of boosting economic growth, creating jobs and doing other things politicians promise to do, but for whatever reason end up doing the opposite.

The country of norway lower's  there rates fee to 0.25% because they are more progressive in terms of economic growth and because of this their paying tax is affected to lower the fees.mostly industrialized country prefer to lower there rates to convience more investor in there countries,especialy in cryptocurrency in order to  accomodate  more economic growth and entrepreneurs.

Is this a good or bad thing? This might sound incredibly ignorant, but I am almost clueless when it comes to how interest works and all of that. I never understood the point of taking out loans and tying up your life in debt that you need to be a slave to pay back.

Negative rates on 10 yr bonds in multiple countries prove that the system of fiat is totally broken....its just a matter of time till it all goes tits up :)

I can't wait as it's long overdue.