What will you do on the day you go into the bank to make a deposit and they want to charge you a ‘storage fee’ on your cash? They want to charge you negative interest rates! They say that because prices are falling globally, they can’t pay any interest. They say you are lucky to be able to store your money there and that the storage fee is so little!

I recently had a chance to interview Mike Verge, author of the newly published book, ‘Global Deflation, and the Next Great American Decade to Come’ (now available on Amazon). I think it is fair to say that his perspective is not main stream. In fact, Janet Yellen, Chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve feels that the global economy is on track for continued growth over the next several years.

However, Verge suggests we should all ‘at least prepare’ for one scenario where the world economy enters a period global deflation. If that happens, we could certainly see negative interest rates migrate from Europe and Japan to North America. He mentioned that these same Central Bankers who are saying that they have the solutions and that everything will be all right, have a poor track record of predicting the future.  For example, Jane Yellen has been saying for almost a year that they will begin raising interest rates when the economy improves. However the economy does not seem to be improving and interest rates have not gone up. In fact Verge thinks the Fed has misread the situation. He thinks the Fed’s next interest rate move will be down. He asked me if I was prepared for that. Was I prepared for negative interest rates?  He made me think… If it was me, what would I Do?

Would I take my money out of the bank? Would I store all my cash at my house? Would it be safe there? If everyone did that, would there be an increase in house break-ins? Are the authorities prepared for a ‘run on the banks’? Would the government announce a ‘Bank Holiday’, and shut the banks? …. That’s when I realized that I have been watching this whole global economic debacle develop over the past few years as if in slow motion. But still I would have to say, “I am not prepared for this!”